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EARLY KINGS 

OF 

NORWAY 



BY 



THOMAS CARLYLE 

Author of "■ HISTORY OF THE FRENCH REV- 
OLUTION," ";PAST AND PRESENT." 



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185. Mysterious Island, Pt I.*- 



THE 



EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY 



,/ 



THOMAS CAELYLE 

If 

AUTHOR OF U THB HISTORY OF FRIEDRICH II., CALLED FREDERICK THE 

GREAT," "HISTORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION," 

4 i PAST AND PRESENT," ETC. 



"^ SlGU. 



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NEW YORK 
JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY 

14 and 16 Vesey Street 



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CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER. PAGE 

I. Harald Haarfagr 7 

II. Eric Blood-axe and Brothers 11 

III. Hakon the Good 14 

IV. Harald Grey-fell and Brothers 20 

V. Hakon Jarl , 24 

VI. Olaf Tryggveson 29 

VII. Reign of Olaf Tryggveson 33 

VIII. Jarls Eric and Svein 48 

IX. King Olaf the Thick-set's Viking Days 53 

X. Reign of King Olaf the Saint 61 

XI. Magnus the Good and Others 83 

XII. Olaf the Tranquil, Magnus Barefoot, and Sigurd 

the Crusader 94 

XIII. Magnus the Blind, Harald Gylle, and Mutual Ex- 

tinction OF THE HAARFAGRS 99 

XIV. SVERRIR AND DESCENDANTS, TO HAKON THE OLD 100 

XV. Hakon the Old at Largs 102 

XVI. Epilogue 104 



The Icelanders, in their long winter, had a great habit of writing, 
and were, and still are, excellent in penmanship, says Dahlmann. It 
is to this fact that any little history there is of the Norse Kings and 
their old tragedies, crimes, and heroisms, is almost all due. The Ice- 
landers, it seems, not only made beautiful letters on their paper or 
parchment, but were laudably observant and desirous of accuracy ; and 
have left us such a collection of narratives (Sagas, literally * Says') as, 
for quantity and quality, is unexampled among rude nations. Snorro 
Sturleson's History of the Norse Kings is built out of these old Sagas, 
and has in it a great deal of poetic fire, not a little faithful sagacity ap- 
plied in shifting and adjusting these old Sagas, and, in a word, deserves, 
were it once well edited, furnished with accurate maps, chronological 
summaries, &c, to be reckoned among the great history-books of the 
world. It is from these sources, greatly aided by accurate, learned, and 
unwearied Dahlmann, 1 the German Professor, that the following rough 
notes of the early Norway Kings are hastily thrown together. In His- 
tories of England (Rapin's excepted) next to nothing has been shown of 
the many and strong threads of connection between English affairs and 
Norse. 

1 Geschichte von Danemark, J. Q, Dahlmann, 3 vols. 8vo. Hamb. 1840-3. 



EARLY KINGS OF NOKWAY. 



CHAPTER I. 

HAKALD HAARFAGR. 

Till about the Year of Grace 860 there were no kings in 
Norway, nothing but numerous jarls, — essentially kinglets, — 
each presiding over a kind of republican or parliamentary 
little territory ; generally striving each to be on some terms 
of human neighbourhood with those about him, but, in spite 
of 'Fylke Things ' (Folk Things) — little parish parliaments — 
and small combinations of these, which had gradually formed 
themselves, often reduced to the unhappy state of quarrel 
with them. Harald Haarfagr was the first to put an end to 
tfris state of things, and become memorable and profitable to 
his country by uniting it under one head and making a king- 
dom of it ; which it has continued to be ever since. His 
father, Halfdan the Black, had already begun this rough but 
salutary process, — inspired by the cupidities and instincts, 
by the faculties and opportunities, which the good genius of 
this world, beneficent often enough under savage forms, and 
diligent at all times to diminish anarchy as the world's worst 
savagery, usually appoints in such cases, conquest, hard fight- 
ing, followed by wise guidance of the conquered ; but it was 
Harald the Fairhaired, his son, who conspicuously carried it 
on and completed it. Harald's birth-year, death-year, and 
chronology in general are known only by inference and com- 
putation ; but, by the latest reckoning, he died about the 
year 933 of our era, a man of eighty-three. 

The business of conquest lasted Harald about twelve years 
(a.d. 860-872 ?), in which he subdued also the vikings of the 



8 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

out-islands; Orkneys, Shetlands, Hebrides, and Man. Sixty 
more years were given him to consolidate and regulate what 
he had conquered, which he did with great judgment, indus- 
try, and success. His reign altogether is counted to have 
been of over seventy years. 

The beginning of his great adventure was of a romantic 
character — youthful love for the beautiful Gyda, a then glori- 
ous and famous young lady of those regions, whom the young 
Harald aspired to marry. Gyda answered his embassy and 
prayer in a distant, lofty manner : ' Her it would not be- 
seem to wed any Jarl or poor creature of that kind ; let 
him do as Gorm of Denmark, Eric of Sweden, Egbert of Eng- 
land, and others had done, — subdue into peace and regula- 
tion the confused, contentious bits of jarls around him, and 
become a king ; then, perhaps, she might think of his pro- 
posal ; till then, not.' Harald was struck with this proud 
answer, which rendered Gyda tenfold more desirable to him. 
He vowed to let his hair grow, never to cut or even to comb it 
till this feat were done, and the peerless Gyda his own. He 
proceeded accordingly to conquer, in fierce battle, a Jarl or 
two every year, and at the end of twelve years had his un- 
kempt (and almost unimaginable) head of hair dipt off, — Jarl 
Rognwald {Reginald) of More, the most valued and valuable 
of all his subject-jarls, being promoted to this sublime bar- 
ber function ; after which King Harald, with head thoroughly 
cleaned, and hair grown, or growing again to the luxuriant 
beauty that had no equal in his day, brought home his Gyda, 
and made her the brightest queen in all the North. He had 
after her, in succession, or perhaps even simultaneously in 
some cases, at least six other wives ; and by Gyda herself one 
daughter and four sons. 

Harald was not to be considered a strict-living man, and he 
had a great deal of trouble, as we shall see, with the tumultu- 
ous ambition of his sons ; but he managed his Government, 
aided by Jarl Rognwald and others, in a large, quietly potent, 
and successful manner ; and it lasted in this royal form till 
his death, after sixty years of it. 

These were the times of Norse colonization ; proud Norse- 



HARALD HAARFAGR. 9 

men flying into other lands, to freer scenes, — to Iceland, to 
the Faroe Islands, which were hitherto quite vacant (tenanted 
only by some mournful hermit, Irish Christian fakir, or so) ; 
still more copiously to the Orkney and Shetland Isles, the 
Hebrides and other countries where Norse squatters and set- 
tlers already were. Settlement of Iceland, we say, settlement 
of the Faroe Islands, and, by far the notablest of all, settle- 
ment of Normandy by Eolf the Ganger (a.d. 876 ?).* 

Rolf, son of Rognwald, 2 was lord of three little islets far 
north, near the Fjord of Folden, called the Three Vigten 
Islands ; but his chief means of living was that of sea-rob- 
bery, which, or at least Rolf's conduct in which, Harald did 
not approve of. In the Court of Harald, sea-robbery was 
strictly forbidden as between Harald's own countries, but as 
against foreign countries it continued to be the one profes- 
sion for a gentleman ; thus, I read, Harald's own chief son, 
King Eric that afterwards was, had been at sea in such em- 
ployments ever since his twelfth year. Rolf's crime, however, 
was that in coming home from one of these expeditions, his 
crew having fallen short of victual, Rolf landed with them on 
the shore of Norway, and, in his strait, drove in some cattle 
there (a crime by law), and proceeded to kill and eat ; which, 
in a little while, he heard that King Harald was on foot to 
enquire into and punish ; whereupon Rolf the Ganger speed- 
ily got into his ships again, got to the coast of France with 
his sea-robbers, got infeftment by the poor King of France 
in the fruitful, shaggy desert which is still called Normandy, — 
land of the Northmen ; and there, gradually felling the for- 
ests, banking the rivers, tilling the fields, became, during the 
next two centuries, Wihelmus Conquestor, the man famous 
to England, and momentous at this day, not to England 
alone, but to all speakers of the English tongue, now spread 
from side to side of the world in a wonderful degree. Tan- 
cred of Hauteville and his Italian Normans, though impor- 

1 ' Settlement,' dated 912, by Munch, Henult, &c. The Saxon chron- 
icle says (anno 876) : ' In this year Rolf overran Normandy with his 
army, and he reigned fifty winters.' 

3 Dahlmann, ii. 87. 



10 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

tant, too, in Italy, are not worth naming in comparison. This 
is a feracious earth, and the grain of mustard-seed will grow 
to miraculous extent in some cases. 

Harald's chief helper, counsellor, and lieutenant was the 
above-mentioned Jarl Kognwald of More, who had the honour 
to cut Harald's dreadful head of hair. This Kognwald was 
father of Turf-Einar, who first invented peat in the Orkneys, 
finding the wood all gone there ; and is remembered to this 
day. Einar, being come to these islands by King Harald's 
permission, to see what he could do in them — islands inhab- 
ited by what miscellany of Picts, Scots, Norse squatters we 
do not know — found the indispensable fuel all wasted. Turf- 
Einar, too, may be regarded as a benefactor to his kind. He 
was, it appears, a bastard ; and got no coddling from his 
father, who disliked him, partly, perhaps, because ' he was 
ugly and blind of an eye,' — got no flattering even on his con- 
quest of the Orkneys and invention of peat. Here is the 
parting speech his father made to him on fitting him out 
with a c long- ship ' (ship of war, ' dragon-ship,' ancient seven- 
ty-four), and sending him forth to make a living for himself 
in the world : "It were best if thou never earnest back, for I 
have small hope that thy people will have honour by thee ; 
thy mother's kin throughout is slavish." 

Harald Haarf agr had a good many sons and daughters ; the 
daughters he married mostly to jarls of due merit who were 
loyal to him ; with the sons, as remarked above, he had a 
great deal of trouble. They were ambitious, stirring fellows, 
and grudged at their finding so little promotion from a father 
so kind to his jarls ; sea-robbery by no means an adequate 
career for the sons of a great king. Two of them, Halfdan 
Haaleg (Long-leg) and Gudrod Ljome (Gleam), jealous of the 
favours won by the great Jarl Kognwald, surrounded him in his 
house one night, and burnt him and sixty men to death there. 
That was the end of Eognwald, the invaluable jarl, always 
true to Haafagr ; and distinguished in world history by pro- 
ducing Rolf the Ganger, author of the Norman Conquest of 
England, and Turf-Einar, who invented peat in the Orkneys. 
Whether Rolf had left Norway at this time there is no chro- 



ERIO BLOOD-AXE AND BROTHERS. 11 

nology to tell me. As to Eolf s surname, e Ganger/ there are 
various hypotheses ; the likeliest, perhaps, that Rolf was so 
weighty a man no horse (small Norwegian horses, big ponies 
rather) could carry him, and that he usually walked, having a 
mighty stride withal, and great velocity on foot. 

One of these murderers of Jarl Eognwald quietly set him- 
self in Eognwald's place, the other making for Orkney to 
serve Turf-Einar in like fashion. Turf-Einar, taken by sur- 
prise, fled to the mainland ; but returned, days or perhaps 
weeks after, ready for battle, fought with Half dan, put his 
party to flight, and at next morning's light searched the isl- 
and and slew all the men he found. As to Halfdan Long-leg 
himself, in fierce memory of his own murdered father, Turf- 
Einar ' cut an eagle on his back,' that is to say, hewed the 
ribs from each side of the spine and turned them out like the 
wings of a spread-eagle : a mode of Norse vengeance fashion- 
able at that time in extremely aggravated cases ! 

Harald Haarfagr, in the mean time, had descended upon the 
Eognwald scene, not in mild mood towards the new jarl 
there ; indignantly dismissed said jarl, and appointed a broth- 
er of Eognwald (brother, notes Dahlmann), though Eogn- 
wald had left other sons. Which done, Haarfagr sailed with 
all speed to the Orkneys, there to avenge that cutting of an 
eagle on the * human back on Turf-Einar's part. Turf- 
Einar did not resist ; submissively met the angry Haarfagr, 
said he left it all, what had been done, what provocation 
there had been, to Haarfagr' s own equity and greatness of 
mind. Magnanimous Haarfagr inflicted a fine of sixty marks 
in gold, which was paid in ready money by Turf-Einar, and 
so the matter ended. 






CHAPTEE II. 

ERIC BLOOD-AXE AND BROTHERS. 

In such violent courses Haarfagr's sons, I know not how 
many of them, had come to an untimely end ; only Eric, the 
accomplished sea-rover, and three others remained to him. 
Among these four sons, rather impatient for property and 



' 1 2 EARL 7 KINGS OF NOR WA T. 

authority of their own, King Harald, in his old days, tried 
to part his kingdom in some eligible and equitable way, and 
retire from the constant press of business, now becoming 
burdensome to him. To each of them he gave a kind of 
kingdom : Eric, his eldest son, to be head king, and the 
others to be feudatory under him, and pay a certain yearly 
contribution, an arrangement which did not answer well at 
all. Head-King Eric insisted on his tribute ; quarrels arose 
as to the payment, considerable fighting and disturbance, 
bringing fierce destruction from King Eric upon many valiant 
but too stubborn Norse spirits and among the rest upon all 
his three brothers, which got him from the Norse populations 
the surname of Blood-axe, 'Eric Blood-axe/ his title in his- 
tory. One of his brothers he had killed in battle before his 
old father's life ended ; this brother was Bjorn, a peaceable, 
improving, trading, economic, Under-king, whom the others 
mockingly called ' Bjorn the Chapman.' The great-grandson 
of this Bjorn became extremely distinguished by-and-by as 
Saint Olaf. Head-King Eric seems to have had a violent wife, 
too. She was thought to have poisoned one of her other 
brothers-in-law. Eric Blood-axe had by no means a gentle 
life of it in this world, trained to sea-robbery on the coasts 
of England, Scotland, Ireland, and France, since his twelfth 
year. 

Old King Fairhair, at the age of seventy, had another son, 
to whom was given the name of Hakon. His mother was a 
slave in Fairhair's house ; slave by ill-luck of war, though 
nobly enough born. A strange adventure connects this 
Hakon with England and King Athelstan, who was then en- 
tering upon his great career there. Short while after this 
Hakon came into the world, there entered Fairhair's palace, 
one evening as Fairhair sat feasting, an English ambassador 
or messenger, bearing in his hand, as gift from King Athel- 
stan, a magnificent sword, with gold hilt and other fine trim- 
mings, to the great Harald, King of Norway. Harald took 
the sword, drew it, or was half-drawing it, adiniringly from the 
scabbard, when the English excellency broke into a scornful 
laugh, "Ha, ha ; thou art now the feudatory of my English 



ERIC BLOOD-AXE AND BROTHERS 13 

king ; thou hast accepted the sword from him, and art now 
his man ! " (acceptance of a sword in that manner being the 
symbol of investiture in those days). Harald looked a trifle 
flurried, it is probable ; but held in his wrath, and did no 
damage to the tricksy Englishman. He held the matter in his 
mind, however, and next summer little Hakon, having got his 
weaning done — one of the prettiest, healthiest little creatures — 
Harald sent him off, under charge of c Hauk ' (Hawk so called), 
one of his principal warriors, with order, " Take him to Eng- 
land," and instructions what to do with him there. And ac- 
cordingly, one evening, Hauk, with thirty men escorting, 
strode into Athelstan's high dwelling (where situated, how 
built, whether with logs like Harald's, I cannot specifically 
say), into Athelstan's high presence, and silently set the wild 
little cherub upon Athelstan's knee. " What is this ? " asked 
Athelstan, looking at the little cherub. " This is King Har- 
ald's son, whom a serving-maid bore to him, and whom he 
now gives thee as foster-child ! " Indignant Athelstan drew 
his sword, as if to do the gift a mischief ; but Hauk said, 
"Thou hast taken him on thy knee" (common symbol of 
adoption) ; " thou canst kill him if thou wilt ; but thou dost 
not thereby kill all the sons of Harald." Athelstan straight- 
way took milder thoughts ; brought up and carefully edu- 
cated Hakon ; from whom, and this singular adventure, came, 
before very long, the first tidings of Christianity into Nor- 
way. 

Harald Haarfagr, latterly withdrawn from all kinds of busi- 
ness, died at the age of eighty-three — about a.d. 933, as is com- 
puted ; nearly contemporary in death with the first Danish 
king, Gorm the Old, who had done a corresponding feat in 
reducing Denmark under one head. Kemarkable old men, 
these two first kings ; and possessed of gifts for bringing 
Chaos a little nearer to the form of Cosmos ; possessed, in 
fact, of loyalties to Cosmos, that is to say, of authentic virtues 
in the savage state, such as have been needed in all societies 
at their incipience in this world ; a kind of ' virtues ' hugely 
in discredit at present, but not unlikely to be needed again, 
to the astonishment of careless persons, before all is done ! 



14: EAELT KINGS OF NORWAY. 



CHAPTEE III. 

HAKON THE GOOD. 

Eric Blood-axe, whose practical reign is counted to have be- 
gun about a.d. 930, had by this time, or within a year or so 
of this time, pretty much extinguished all his brother kings, 
and crushed down recalcitrant spirits, in his violent way ; but 
had naturally become entirely unpopular in Norway, and filled 
it with silent discontent and even rage against him. Hakon, 
Eairhair's last son, the little foster-child of Athelstan in Eng- 
land, who had been baptized and carefully educated, was come 
to his fourteenth or fifteenth year at his father's death ; a very 
shining youth, as Athelstan saw with just pleasure. So soon 
as the few preliminary preparations had been settled, Hakon, 
furnished with a ship or two by Athelstan, suddenly appeared 
in Norway ; got acknowledged by the Peasant Thing in Trond- 
hjem ; ' the news of which ilew over Norway, like fire through 
dried grass,' says an old chronicler. So that Eric, with his 
Queen Gunhild, and seven small children, had to run ; no 
other shift for Eric. They went to the Orkneys first of all, 
then to England, and he ' got Northumberland as earldom/ I 
vaguely hear, from Athelstan. But Eric soon died, and his 
queen, with her children, went back to the Orkneys in search 
of refuge or help ; to little purpose there or elsewhere. From 
Orkney she went to Denmark, where Harald Blue-tooth took 
her poor eldest boy as foster-child ; but I fear did not very 
faithfully keep that promise. The Danes had been robbing 
extensively during the late tumults in Norway ; this the 
Christian Hakon, now established there, paid in kind, and 
the two countries were at war ; so that Gunhild's little boy 
was a welcome card in the hand of Blue-tooth. 

Hakon proved a brilliant and successful king ; regulated 
many things, public law among others (Gule-Thing Law, 
Froste-Thing Law : these are little codes of his accepted by 
their respective Things, and had a salutary effect in their 
time) ; with prompt dexterity he drove back the Blue-Tooth 



HAKON THE GOOD. 15 

foster-son invasions every time they came ; and on the whole 
gained for himself the name of Hakon the Good. These Dan- 
ish invasions were a frequent source of trouble to him, but his 
greatest and continual trouble was that of extirpating heathen 
idolatry from Norway, and introducing the Christian Evangel 
in its stead. His transcendent anxiety to achieve this salutary 
enterprise was all along his grand difficulty and stumbling- 
block ; the heathen opposition to it being also rooted and 
great. Bishops and priests from England Hakon had, preach- 
ing and baptizing what they could, but making only slow prog- 
ress ; much too slow for Hakon's zeal. On the other hand, 
every Yule-tide, when the chief heathen were assembled in his 
own palace on their grand sacrificial festival, there was great 
pressure put upon Hakon, as to sprinkling with horse-blood, 
drinking Yule-beer, eating horse-flesh, and the other distress- 
ing rites ; the whole of which Hakon abhorred, and with all 
his steadfastness strove to reject utterly. Sigurd, Jarl of 
Lade (Trondhjem), a liberal heathen, not openly a Christian, 
was ever a wise counsellor and conciliator in such affairs ; and 
proved of great help to Hakon. Once, for example, there 
having risen, at a Yule-feast, loud, almost stormful demand 
that Hakon, like a true man and brother, should drink Yule- 
beer with them in their sacred hightide, Sigurd persuaded 
him to comply, for peace sake, at least in form. Hakon took 
the cup in his left hand (excellent hot beer), and with his right 
cut the sign of the cross above it, then drank a draught. 
"Yes; but what is this with the king's right hand?" cried 
the company. " Don't you see ? " answered shifty Sigurd ; 
"he makes the sign of Thor's hammer before drinking!" 
which quenched the matter for the time. 

Horse-flesh, horse-broth, and the horse-ingredient gener- 
ally, Hakon all but inexorably declined. By Sigurd's press- 
ing exhortation and entreaty, he did once take a kettle of 
horse-broth by the handle, with a good deal of linen-quilt or 
towel interposed, and did open his lips for what of steam 
could insinuate itself. At another time he consented to a 
particle of horse-liver, intending privately, I guess, to keep it 
outside the gullet, and smuggle it away without swallowiny ; 



16 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

but farther than this not even Sigurd could persuade him to 
go. At the Things held in regard to this matter Hakon's 
success was always incomplete ; .now and then it was plain 
failure, and Hakon had to draw back till a better time. Here 
is one specimen of the response he got on such an occasion ; 
curious specimen, withal, of antique parliamentary eloquence 
from an Anti-Christian Thing. 

At a Thing of all the Fylkes of Trondhjem, Thing held at 
Froste in that region, King Hakon, with all the eloquence he 
had, signified that it was imperatively necessary that all 
Bonders and sub-Bonders should become Christians, and be- 
lieve in one God, Christ the Son of Mary ; renouncing en- 
tirely blood sacrifices and heathen idols ; should keep every 
seventh day holy, abstain from labour that day, and even from 
food, devoting the day to fasting and sacred meditation. 
"Whereupon, by way of universal answer, arose a confused 
universal murmur of entire dissent. " Take away from us 
our old belief, and also our time for labour ! " murmured they 
in angry astonishment ; " how can even the land be got tilled 
in that way ? '■ " We cannot work if we don't get food," said 
the hand labourers and slaves. "It lies in King Hakon's 
blood," remarked others ; "his father and all his kindred were 
apt to be stingy about food, though liberal enough with 
money." At length, one Osbjorn (or Bear of the Asen or 
Gods, what we now call Osborne), one Osbjorn of Medalhusin 
Gulathal, stept forward, and said, in a distinct manner: "We 
Bonders (= peasant-proprietors) thought, King Hakon, when 
thou heldest thy first Thing-day here in Trondhjem, and we 
took thee for our king, and received our hereditary lands 
from thee again, that we had got heaven itself. Biit now 
we know not how it is, whether we have won freedom, or 
whether thou intendest anew to make us slaves, with this 
wonderful proposal that we should renounce our faith, which 
our fathers before us have held, and all our ancestors as well, 
first in the age of burial by burning, and now in that of earth 
burial ; and yet these departed ones were much our superiors, 
and their faith, too, has brought prosperity to us ! Thee, at 
the same time, we have loved so much that we raised thee to 



IIAKON THE GOOD. 17 

manage all the laws of the land, and speak as their voice to 
us all. And even now it is our will and the vote of all Bond- 
ers to keep that paction which thou gavest us here on the 
Thing at Froste, and to maintain thee as king so long as any 
of us Bonders who are here upon the Thing has life left, pro- 
vided thou, king, wilt go fairly to work, and demand of us 
only such things as are not impossible. But if thou wilt fix 
upon this thing with so great obstinacy, and employ force 
and power, in that case we Bonders have taken the resolution, 
all of us, to fall away from thee, and to take for ourselves 
another head, who will so behave that we may enjoy in free- 
dom the belief which is agreeable to us. Now shalt thou, 
king, choose one of these two courses before the Thing dis- 
perse." 'Whereupon,' adds the Chronicle, ' all the Bonders 
raised a mighty shout, " Yes, we will have it so, as has been 
said." ' So that Jarl Sigurd had to intervene, and King Hakon 
to choose for the moment the milder branch of the alterna- 
tive. 1 At other Things Hakon was more or less successful. 
All his days, by such methods as there were, he kept pressing- 
forward with this great enterprise, and on the whole did 
thoroughly shake asunder the old edifice of heathendom, and 
fairly introduce some foundation for the new and better rule 
of faith and life among his people. Sigurd, Jarl of Lade, his 
wise counsellor in all these matters, is also a man worthy of 
notice. 

Hakon's arrangements against the continual invasions of 
Eric's sons, with Danish Blue-tooth backing them, were mani- 
fold, and for a long time successful. He appointed, after 
consultation and consent in the various Things, so many war- 
ships, fully manned and ready, to be furnished instantly on 
the King's demand by each province or fjord ; watchfires, on 
fit places, from hill to hill all along the coast, were to be care- 
fully set up, carefully maintained in readiness, and kindled on 
any alarm of war. By such methods Blue-tooth & Co.'s inva- 
sions were for a long while triumphantly, and even rapidly, 
one and all of them, beaten back, till at length they seemed 
as if intending to cease altogether, and leave Hakon alone of 

1 Dahlmann, ii. 93. 
o 



IS EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

them. But such was not their issue after all. The sons of 
Eric had only abated under constant discouragement, had not 
finally left off from what seemed their one great feasibility in 
life. Gunhild, their mother, was still with them : a most 
contriving, fierce-minded, irreconcilable woman, diligent and 
urgent on them, in season and out of season ; and as for King 
Blue-tooth, he was at all times ready to help, with his good- 
will at least, 

That of the alarm-fires on Hakon's part was found trouble- 
some by his people ; sometimes it was even hurtful and pro- 
voking (lighting your alarni-fires and rousing the whole coast 
and population, when it was nothing but some paltry viking 
with a couple of ships) ; in short, the alarm- signal system fell 
into disuse, and good King Hakon himself, in the first place, 
paid the penalty. It is counted, by the latest commentators, 
to have been about a.d. 961, sixteenth or seventeenth year of 
Hakon's pious, valiant, and worthy reign. Being at a feast 
one day, with many guests, on the Island of Stord, sudden 
announcement came to him that ships from the south were 
approaching in quantity, and evidently ships of war. This 
was the biggest of all the Blue-tooth foster-son invasions ; 
and it was fatal to Hakon the Good that night. Eyvind the 
Skaldaspillir (annihilator of all other Skalds), in his famous 
Hakon's Song, gives account, and, still more pertinently, the 
always practical Snorro. Danes in great multitude, six to 
one, as people afterwards computed, springing swiftly to land, 
and ranking themselves ; Hakon, nevertheless, at once decid- 
ing not to take to his ships and run, but to fight there, one to 
six ; fighting, accordingly, in his most splendid manner, and 
at last gloriously prevailing ; routing and scattering back to 
their ships and flight homeward these six-to-one Danes. ' Dur- 
ing the struggle of the fight,' says Snorro, 'he was very con- 
spicuous among other men; and while the sun shone, his 
bright gilded helmet glanced, and thereby many weapons were 
directed at him. One of his henchmen, Eyvind Finnson (i. e. 
Skaldaspillir, the poet), took a hat, and put it over the King's 
helmet. Now, among the hostile first leaders were two uncles 
of the Ericsons, brothers of Gunhild, great champions both ; 



HAEON THE GOOD. 19 

Skreya, the elder of them, on the disappearance of the glitter- 
ing helmet, shouted boastfully, " Does the king of the Norse- 
men hide himself, then, or has he fled ? Where now is the 
golden helmet ? " And so saying, Skreya, and his brother Alf 
with him, pushed on like fools or madmen. The king said, 
" Come on in that way, and you shall find the king of the 
Norsemen ! " And in a short space of time braggart Skreya 
did come up, swinging his sword, and made a cut at the 
king ; but Thoralf the Strong, an Icelander, who fought at 
the king's side, dashed his shield so hard against Skreya that 
he tottered with the shock. On the same instant the king 
takes his sword ' quernbiter ' (able to cut querns or millstones) 
with both hands, and hews Skreya through helm and head, 
cleaving him down to the shoulders. Thoralf also slew Alf. 
That was what they got by such over-hasty search for the 
king of the Norsemen. 5 1 

Snorro considers the fall of these two champion uncles as 
the crisis of the fight ; the Danish force being much disheart- 
ened by such a sight, and King Hakon now pressing on so 
hard that all men gave way before him, the battle on the 
Ericson part became a whirl of recoil ; and in a few minutes 
more a torrent of mere flight and haste to get on board their 
ships, put to sea again ; in which operation many of them 
were drowned, says Snorro ; survivors making instant sail 
for Denmark in that sad condition. 

This seems to have been King Hakon's finest battle, and the 
most conspicuous of his victories, due not a little to his own 
grand qualities shown on the occasion. But, alas ! it was his 
last also. He was still zealously directing the chase of that 
mad Danish flight, or whirl of recoil towards their ships, when 
an arrow, shot most likely at a venture, hit him under the left 
armpit ; and this proved his death. 

He was helped into his ship, and made sail for Alrekstad, 
where his chief residence in those parts was ; but had to stop 
at a smaller place of his (which had been his mother's, and 
where he himself was born) — a place called Hella (the Flat 
Rock), still known as 'Hakon's Hella' — faint from loss of 
l Lainy's Snorro, i. 344. 



20 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

blood and crushed down as he had never before felt. Having 
no son and only one daughter, he appointed these invasive 
sons of Erie to be sent for, and if he died to become kings ; 
but to " spare his friends and kindred." " If a longer life be 
granted me," he said, " I will go out of this land to Christian 
men, and do penance for what I have committed against God. 
But if I die in the country of the heathen, let me have such burial 
as you yourselves think fittest." These are his last recorded 
words. And in heathen fashion he was buried, and besung 
by Eyvind and the Skalds, though himself a zealously Christian 
king, Hakon the Good ; so one still finds him worthy of being 
called. The sorrow on Hakon's death, Snorro tells us, was so 
great and universal, ' that he was lamented both by friends 
and enemies ; and they said that never again would Norway 
see such a king, 5 



CHAPTEK IV. 

HARALD GREY-EELL AND BROTHERS. 

Eric's sons, four or five of them, with a Harald at the top, 
now at once got Norway in hand, all of it but Trondhjem, 
as king and under-kings, and made a severe time of it for 
those who had been, or seemed to be their enemies. Excel- 
lent Jarl Sigurd, always so useful to Hakon and his country, 
was killed by them ; and they came to repent that before very 
long. The slain Sigurd left a son, Hakon, as Jarl, who be- 
came famous in the northern world by and by. This Hakon, 
and him only, would the Trondhjemers accept as sovereign. 
"Death to him, then," said the sons of Eric, but only in 
secret, till they had got their hands free and were ready ; 
which was not yet for some years. Nay, Hakon, when act- 
ually attacked, made good resistance, and threatened to cause 
trouble. Nor did he by any means get his death from these 
sons of Eric at this time, or till long afterwards at all, from 
one of their kin, as it chanced. On the contrary, he fled to 
Denmark now, and by and by managed to come back, to 
their cost. 



HARALD GREY-FELL AND BROTHERS. 21 

Among their other chief victims were two cousins of their 
own, Tryggve and Gudrod, who had been honest under-kings 
to the late head-king, Hakon the Good ; but were now be- 
come suspect, and had to fight for their lives, and lose them 
in a tragic manner. Tryggve had a son, whom we shall hear 
of. Gudrod, son of worthy Bjorn the Chapman, was grand- 
father of Saint Olaf, whom all men have heard of, — who has a 
church in Southwark even, and another in Old Jewry, to this 
hour. In all these violences, Gunhild, widow of the late 
King Eric, was understood to have a principal hand. She 
had come back to Norway with her sons ; and naturally 
passed for the secret adviser and Maternal President in what- 
ever of violence went on ; always reckoned a fell, vehement, 
relentless personage where her own interests were concerned. 
Probably as things settled, her influence on affairs grew less. 
At least one hopes so ; and, in the Sagas, hears less and less 
of her, and before long nothing. 

Harald, the head-king in this Eric fraternity, does not 
seem to have been a bad man, — the contrary indeed ; but his 
position was untowardly, full of difficulty and contradictions. 
Whatever Harald could accomplish for behoof of Christianity, 
or real benefit to Norway, in these cross circumstances, he 
seems to have done in a modest and honest manner. He got 
the name of Grey fell from his people on a very trivial account, 
but seemingly with perfect good-humour on their part. Some 
Iceland trader, had brought a cargo of furs to Trondhjem 
(Lade) for sale ; sale being slacker than the Icelander wished, 
he presented a chosen specimen, cloak, doublet, or whatever 
it was, to Harald, who wore it with acceptance in public, and 
rapidly brought disposal of the Icelander's stock, and the 
surname of Grey fell to himself. His under-kings and he 
were certainly not popular, though I almost think Greyfell 
himself, in absence of his mother and the under-kings, might 
have been so. But here they all were, and had wrought great 
trouble in Norway. " Too many of them," said everybody ; 
" too many of these courts and court people, eating up any 
substance that there is ! " For the seasons withal, two or 
three of them in succession, were bad for m-ass, much more 



22 EABLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

for grain ; no herring came either ; very cleanness of teeth 
was like to come in Eyvind Skaldaspillir's opinion. This 
scarcity became at last their share of the great Famine of 
a.d. 975, which desolated Western Europe (see the poem in 
the Saxon Chronicle). And all this by Eyvind Skaldaspillar, 
and the heathen Norse in general, was ascribed to anger of 
the heathen gods. Discontent in Norway, and especially in 
Eyvind Skaldaspillir, seems to have been very great. 

Whereupon exile Hakon, Jarl Sigurd's son, bestirs himself 
in Denmark, backed by old King Blue-tooth, and begins in- 
vading and encroaching in a miscellaneous way ; especially 
intriguing and contriving plots all round him. An unfathom- 
ably cunning kind of fellow, as well a£ an audacious and 
strong-handed ! Intriguing in Trondhjem, where he gets the 
under-king, Greyfell's brother, fallen upon and murdered ; 
intriguing with Gold Harald, a distinguished cousin or nephew 
of King Blue-tooth, who had done fine viking work, and 
gained such wealth that he got the epithet of ' Gold,' and 
who now was infinitely desirous of a share in Blue-tooth's 
kingdom as the proper finish to these sea-rovings. He even 
ventured one day to make publicly a distinct proposal that 
way to Bang Harald Blue-tooth himself ; who flew into thun- 
der and lightning at the mere mention of it ; so that none 
durst speak to him for several days afterwards. Of both these 
Haralds Hakon was confidential friend ; and needed all his 
skill to walk without immediate annihilation between such a 
pair of dragons, and work out Norway for himself withal. In 
the end he found he must take solidly to Blue-tooth's side of 
the question ; and that they two must provide a recipe for 
Gold Harald and Norway both at once. 

" It is as much as your life is worth to speak again of shar- 
ing this Danish kingdom," said Hakon very privately to Gold 
Harald; "but could not you, my golden friend, be content 
with Norway for a kingdom, if one helped you to it ? " 

" That could I well," answered Harald. 

" Then keep me those nine war-ships you have just been 
rigging for a new viking cruise ; have these in readiness when 
I lift my finger ! " 



HAEALD GREY-FELL AND BROTHERS. 23 

That was the recipe contrived for Gold Harald ; recipe for 
King Greyfell goes into the same phial, and is also ready. 

Hitherto the Hakon-Blue-tooth disturbances in Norway had 
amounted to but little. King Greyfell, a very active and val- 
iant man, has constantly, without much difficulty, repelled 
these sporadic bits of troubles ; but Greyfell, all the same, 
would willingly have peace with dangerous old Blue-tooth 
(ever anxious to get his clutches over Norway on any terms), 
if peace with him could be had. Blue-tooth,, too, professes 
every willingness ; inveigles Greyfell, he and Hakon do, to 
have a friendly meeting on the Danish borders, and not only 
settle all these quarrels, but generously settle Greyfell in cer- 
tain fiefs which he claimed in Denmark itself ; and so swear 
everlasting friendship. Greyfell joyfully complies, punctually 
appears at the appointed day in Lymfjord Sound, the ap- 
pointed place. Whereupon Hakon gives signal to Gold Har- 
ald, ' To Lymfjord with these nine ships of yours, swift ! ' 
Gold Harald flies to Lymfjord with his ships, challenges King 
Harald Greyfell to land and fight ; which the undaunted 
Greyfell, though so far outnumbered, does ; and, fighting his 
very best, perishes there, he and almost all his people. Which 
done, Jarl Hakon, who is in readiness, attacks Gold Harald, 
the victorious but the wearied ; easily beats Gold Harald, 
takes him prisoner, and instantly hangs and ends him, to the 
huge joy of King Blue-tooth and Hakon, who now make in- 
stant voyage to Norway ; drive all the brother under-kings 
into rapid flight to the Orkneys, to any readiest shelter ; and 
so, under the patronage of Blue-tooth, Hakon, with the title 
of Jarl, becomes ruler of Norway. This foul treachery done 
on the brave and honest Harald Greyfell is by some dated 
about a.d. 969, by Munch, 965, by others, computing out of 
Snorro only, a.d. 975. For there is always an uncertainty in 
these Icelandic dates (say rather, rare and rude attempts at 
dating, without even an 'a.d.' or other fixed 'year one' to go 
upon in Iceland), though seldom, I think, so large a discrep- 
ancy as here. 



24 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 



CHAPTEE V. 

HAKON JARL. 

Hakon Jarl, sucli the style he took, had engaged to pay 
some kind of tribute to King Blue-tooth, ( if he could ; ' but 
he never did pay any, pleading always the necessity of his 
own affairs ; with which excuse, joined to Hakon's readiness 
in things less important, King Blue-tooth managed to content 
himself, Hakon being always his good neighbour, at least, and 
the two mutually dependent. In Norway, Hakon, with the 
title of king, did in a strong-handed, steadfast, and at length 
successful way, the office of one ; governed Norway (some 
count) for above twenty years ; and, both at home and abroad, 
had much consideration through most of that time ; specially 
among the heathen orthodox, for Hakon Jarl himself was a 
zealous heathen, fixed in his mind against these chimerical 
Christian innovations and unsalutary changes of creed, and 
would have gladly trampled out all traces of what the last two 
kings (for Grey fell, also, was an English Christian after his 
sort) had done in this respect. But he wisely discerned that 
it was not possible, and that, for peace sake, he must not 
even attempt it-, but must strike preferably into c perfect tol- 
eration/ and that of ' every one getting to heaven ' (or even to 
the other goal) ' in his own way.' He himself, it is well known, 
repaired many heathen temples (a great ' church builder in 
his way !), manufactured many splendid idols, with much gild- 
ing and such artistic ornament as there was, — in particular, 
one huge image of Thor, not forgetting the hammer and ap- 
pendages, and such a collar (supposed of solid gold, which it 
was not quite, as we shall hear in time) round the neck of 
him as was never seen in all the North. How he did his own 
Yule festivals, with what magnificent solemnity, the horse-eat- 
ings, blood-sprinklings, and other sacred rites, need not be 
told. Something of a c Bitualist,' one may perceive ; perhaps 
had Scandinavian Puseyisms in him, and other desperate 
heathen notions. He was universally believed to have gone 



HAKON JABL. 25 

into magic for one thing, and to have dangerous potencies 
derived from the Devil himself. The dark heathen mind of 
him struggling vehemently in that strange element, not al- 
together so unlike our own in some points. 

For the rest, he was evidently, in practical matters, a man 
of sharp, clear insight, of steadfast resolution, diligence, 
promptitude ; and managed his secular matters uncommonly 
well. Had sixteen Jarls under him, though himself only 
Hakon Jarl by title ; and got obedience from them stricter 
than any king since Haarfagr had done. Add to which that 
the country had years excellent for grass and crop, and that 
th* herrings came in exuberance ; tokens, to the thinking- 
mind, that Hakon Jarl was a favourite of Heaven. 

His fight with the far-famed Jom's vikings was his grandest 
exploit in public rumour. Jomsburg, a locality not now 
known, except that it was near the mouth of the Kiver Oder, 
denoted in those ages the impregnable castle of a certain body 
corporate, or ' Sea-Robbery Association (limited),' which, for 
some generations, held the Baltic in terror, and plundered far 
beyond the Belt, — in the ocean itself, in Flanders and the op- 
ulent trading havens there, — above all, in opulent anarchic 
England, which, for forty years from about this time, was the 
pirates' Goshen ; and yielded, regularly every summer, slaves, 
danegelt, and miscellaneous plunder, like no other country 
Jomsburg or the viking- world had ever known. Palnatoke, 
Bue, and the other quasi-heroic heads of this establishment 
are still remembered in the northern parts. Palnatoke is the 
title of a tragedy by ©ehlenschlager, which had its run of 
immortality in Copenhagen some sixty or seventy years ago. 

I judge the institution to have been in its floweriest state 
probably now in Hakon Jarl's time. Hakon Jarl and these 
pirates, robbing Hakon's subjects and merchants that fre- 
quented him, were naturally in quarrel ; and frequent fight- 
ings had fallen out, not generally to the profit of the Joms- 
burgers, who at last determined on revenge, and the rooting 
out of this obstructive Hakon Jarl. They assembled in force 
at the Cape of S tad,— -in the Firda Fylke ; and the fight was 
dreadful in the extreme, noise of it filling all the North for 



26 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

long afterwards. Hakon, fighting like a lion, could scarcely 
hold his own, — Death or Victory, the word on both sides ; 
when suddenly, the heavens grew black, and there broke out 
a terrific storm of thunder and hail, appalling to the human 
mind, — universe swallowed wholly in black night ; only the 
momentary forked-blazes, the thunder-pealing as of Ragnarok, 
and the battering hail-torrents, hailstones about the size of an 
egg. Thor with his hammer evidently acting ; but in behalf 
of whom ? The Jomsburgers in the hideous darkness, broken 
only by flashing thunderbolts, had a dismal apprehension that 
it was probably not on their behalf (Thor having a sense of 
justice in him) ; and before the storm ended, thirty-five of 
their seventy ships sheered away, leaving gallant Bue, with 
thirty-five ships, to follow as they liked, who reproachfully 
hailed these fugitives, and continued the now hopeless battle. 
Bue's nose and lips were smashed or cut away ; Bue managed, 
half-articulately, to exclaim, "Ha ! the maids (' mays') of Den- 
mark will never kiss me more. Overboard, all ye Bue's men ! " 
And taking his two sea-chests, with ail the gold he had gained 
in such life-struggle from of old, sprang overboard accord- 
ingly, and finished the affair. Hakon Jarl's renown rose nat- 
urally to the transcendent pitch after this exploit. His people, 
I suppose chiefly the Christian part of them, whispered one to 
another, with a shudder, ' That in the blackest of the thunder- 
storm he had taken his youngest little boy and made away 
with him ; sacrificed him to Thor or some devil, and gained 
his victory by art-magic, or something worse.' Jaii Eric, 
Hakon's eldest son, without suspicion of art-magic, but already 
a distinguished viking, became thrice distinguished by his 
style of sea-fighting in this battle ; and awakened great ex- 
pectations in the viking public ; of him we shall hear again. 

The Jomsburgers, one might fancy, after this sad clap went 
visibly down in the world ; but the fact is not altogether so. 
Old King Blue-tooth was now dead, died of a wound got in 
battle with his tm-natural (so-called ' natural ') son and suc- 
cessor, Otto Svein of the Forked Beard, afterwards king and 
conqueror of England for a little while ; and seldom, perhaps 
never, had vikingism been in such flower as now. This 



HAKON JARL. 27 

man's name is Sven in Swedish, Svend in German, and means 
boy or lad — the English ' swain.' It was at old ' Father Blue- 
tooth's funeral-ale ' (drunken burial-feast), that Svein, carous- 
ing with his Jomsburg chiefs and other choice spirits, gener- 
ally of the robber class, all risen into height of highest robber 
enthusiasm, pledged the vow to one another : Svein that he 
would conquer England (which, in a sense, he, after long 
struggling, did) ; and the Jomsburgers that they would ruin 
and root out Hakon Jarl (which they could by no means do), 
and other guests other foolish things which proved equally 
unfeasible. Sea-robber volunteers so especially abounding 
in that time, — one perceives how easily the Jomsburgers could 
recruit themselves, — build or refit new robber fleets, man 
them with the pick of crews, and steer for opulent, fruitful 
England ; where, under Ethelred the Unready, was such a 
field for profitable enterprise as the viking public never had 
before or since. 

An idle question sometimes rises on me — idle enough, for 
it never can be answered in the affirmative or the negative, 
"Whether it were not these same refitted Jomsburgers who ap- 
peared some while after this at Red Head Point, on the shore 
of Angus, and sustained a new severe beating, in what the 
Scotch still faintly remember as their ' Battle of Loncarty ? ' 
Beyond doubt a powerful Norse-pirate armament dropt anchor 
at the Red Head, to the alarm of peaceable mortals, about 
that time. It was thought and hoped to be on its way for 
England, but it visibly hung on for several days, deliberating 
(as was thought) whether they would do this poorer coast the 
honour to land on it before going farther. Did land, and 
vigorously plunder and burn south-westward as far as Perth ; 
laid siege to Perth ; but brought out King Kenneth on them, 
and produced that ' Battle of Loncarty ' which still dwells in 
vague memory among the Scots. Perhaps it might be the 
Jomsburgers ; perhaps also not ; for there were many pirate 
associations, lasting not from century to century like the 
Jomsburgers, but only for very limited periods, or from year 
to year ; indeed, it was mainly by such that the splendid 
thief-harvest of England was reaped in this disastrous time. 



28 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

No Scottish chronicler gives the least of exact date to their 
famed victory of Loncarty, only that it was achieved by Ken- 
neth IU., which will mean sometime between a.d. 975 and 
994 ; and, by the order they put it in, probably soon after 
a.d. 975, or the beginning of this Kenneth's reign. Buchan- 
an's narrative, carefully distilled from all the ancient Scot- 
tish sources, is of admirable quality for style and otherwise ; 
quiet, brief, with perfect clearness, perfect credibility even, — 
except that semi-miraculous appendage of the Ploughmen, 
Hay and Sons, always hanging to the tail of it ; the grain of 
possible truth in which can now never be extracted by man's 
art ! l In brief, what we know is, fragments of ancient human 
bones and armour have occasionally been ploughed up in this 
locality, proof-positive of ancient fighting here ; and the fight 
fell out not long after Hakon's beating of the Jomsburgers at 
the Cape of Stad, And in such dim glimmer of wavering 
twilight, the question whether these of Loncarty were refitted 
Jomsburgers or not must be left hanging. Loncarty is now 
the biggest bleachfield in Queen Victoria's dominions ; no 
village or hamlet there, only the huge bleaching-house and a 
beautiful field, some six or seven miles north-west of Perth, 
bordered by the beautiful Tay river on the one side, and by 
its beautiful tributary Almond on the other ; a Loncarty 
fitted either for bleaching linen, or for a bit of fair duel be- 
tween nations, in those simple times. Whether our refitted 
Jomsburgers had the least thing to do with it is only matter 
of fancy, but if it were they who here again got a good beat- 
ing, fancy would be glad to find herself fact. The old pirati- 
cal kings of Denmark had been at the founding of Jomsburg, 
and to Svein of the Forked Beard it was still vitally important, 
but not so to the great Knut, or any king that followed ; all 
of whom had better business than mere thieving ; and it was 
Magnus the Good, of Norway, a man of still higher anti-anar- 
chic qualities, that annihilated it, about a century later. 

Hakon Jarl, his chief labours in the world being over, is 
said to have become very dissolute in his elder days, espe- 

1 G. Buchanani Opera Omnia, i. 103-4 (Curante Ruddiiuano, Edin- 
bur-i 1715). 



OLAF TRYGGVESON. 29 

cially in the matter of women ; the wretched old fool, led away 
by idleness and fulness of bread, which to all of us are well 
said to be the parents of mischief. Having absolute power, 
he got into the habit of openly plundering men's pretty 
daughters and wives from them, and, after a few weeks, send- 
ing them back ; greatly to the rage of the fierce Norse heart, 
had there been any means of resisting or revenging. It did, 
after a little while, prove the ruin and destruction of Hakon 
the Kich, as he was then called. It opened the door, namely, 
for entry of Olaf Tryggveson upon the scene, — a very much 
grander man ; in regard to . whom the wiles and traps of 
Hakon proved to be a recipe, not on Tryggveson, but on the 
wily Hakon himself, as shall now be seen straightway. 



CHAPTEE VI. 

OLAF TKYGGVESON. 



Hakon, in late times, had heard of a famous stirring person 5 
victorious in various lands and seas, latterly united in sea- 
robbery with Svein, Prince Koyal of Denmark, afterwards 
King Svein of the Double-beard (' Zvae Skiaeg,' Two, Shag), or 
fork-beard, both of whom had already done transcendent feats 
in the viking way during this copartnery. The fame of Svein, 
and this stirring personage, whose name was ' Ole,' and, re- 
cently, their stupendous feats in plunder of England, siege of 
London, and other wonders and splendours of viking glory 
and success, had gone over all the North, awakening the at- 
tention of Hakon and everybody there. The name of ' Ole ' 
was enigmatic, mysterious, and even dangerous-looking to 
Hakon Jarl, who at length sent out a confidential spy to in- 
vestigate this * Ole,' — a feat which the confidential spy did 
completely accomplish — by no means to Hakon's profit ! The 
mysterious ' Ole ' proved to be no other than Olaf, son of 
Tryggve, destined to blow Hakon Jarl suddenly into destruc- 
tion, and become famous among the heroes of the Norse 
world. 

Of Olaf Tryggveson one always hopes there might, one day, 



30 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

some real outline of a biography be written ; fished from the 
abysses where (as usual) it welters deep in foul neighbour- 
hood for the present. Farther on we intend a few words 
more upon the matter. But in this place all that concerns 
us in it limits itself to the two following facts : first, that 
Hakon's confidential spy ' found Ole in Dublin ; ' picked ac- 
quaintance with him, got him to confess that he was actually 
Olaf, son of Tryggve (the Tryggve whom Blood-axe's fierce 
widow and her sons had murdered) ; got him gradually to 
own that perhaps an expedition into Norway might have its 
chances ; and finally that, under such a wise and loyal guid- 
ance as his (the confidential spy's, whose friendship for 
Tryggveson was so indubitable) he (Tryggveson) would actu- 
ally try it upon Hakon Jarl, the dissolute old scoundrel. Fact 
second is, that about the time they two set sail from Dublin 
on their Norway expedition, Hakon Jarl removed to Trond- 
hjem, then called Lade ; intending to pass some months there. 

Now just about the time when Tryggveson, spy, and party 
had landed in Norway, and were advancing upon Lade, with 
w T hat support from the public could be got, dissolute old 
Hakon Jarl had heard of one Gudrun, a Bonder's wife, un- 
paralleled in beauty, who was called in those parts ' Sunshine 
of the Grove ' (so inexpressibly lovely) ; and sent off a couple 
of thralls to bring her to him. " Never," answered Gudrun ; 
"never," her indignant husband; in a tone dangerous and 
displeasing to these Court thralls ; who had to leave rapidly, 
biiu threatened to return in better strength before long. 
Whereupon, instantly, the indignant Bonder and his Sun- 
shine of the Grove sent out their war-arrow, rousing all the 
country into angry promptitude, and more than one perhaps 
into greedy hope of revenge for their own injuries. The rest 
of Hakon's history now rushes on with extreme rapidity, 

Sunshine of the Grove, when next demanded of her Bonder, 
has the whole neighbourhood assembled in arms round her ; 
rumour of Tryggveson is fast making it the whole country. 
Hakon's insolent messengers are cut in pieces ; Hakon finds 
he cannot fly under cover too soon. With a single slave he 
flies that same night ; — but whitherward ? Can think of no 



OLAF TRYGGVESON. <31 

safe place, except to some old mistress of his, who lives re- 
tired in that neighbourhood, and has some pity or regard for 
the wicked old Hakon. Old mistress does receive him, pities 
him, will do all she can to protect and hide him. But how, 
by what uttermost stretch of female artifice hide him here ; 
every one will search here first of all ! Old mistress, by the 
slave's help, extemporizes a cellar under the floor of her pig- 
house ; sticks Hakon and slave into that, as the one safe se- 
clusion she can contrive. Hakon and slave, begrunted by the 
pigs above them, tortured by the devils within and about them, 
passed two days in circumstances more and more horrible. 
For they heard, through their light-slit and breathing-slit, 
the triumphs of Tryggveson proclaiming itself by Tryggveson's 
own lips, who had mounted a big boulder near by and was 
victoriously speaking to the people, winding up with a prom- 
ise of honours and rewards to whoever should bring him 
wicked old Hakon's head. Wretched Hakon, justly suspect- 
ing his slave, tried to at least keep himself awake. Slave did 
keep himself awake till Hakon dozed or slept, then swiftly cut 
off Hakon's head, and plunged out with it to the presence of 
Tryggveson. Tryggveson, detesting the traitor, useful as the 
treachery was, cut off the slave's head too, had it hung up 
along with Hakon's on the pinnacle of the Lade Gallows, 
where the populace pelted both heads with stones and many 
curses, especially the more important of the two. ' Hakon 
the Bad ' ever henceforth, instead of Hakon the Rich. 

This was the end of Hakon Jarl, the last support of 
heathenry in Norway, among other characteristics he had: 
a strong-handed, hard-headed, very relentless, greedy, and 
wicked being. He is reckoned to have ruled in Norway, or 
mainly ruled, either in the struggling or triumphant state, for 
about thirty years (965-95?). He and his seem to have 
formed, by chance rather than design, the chief opposition 
which the Haarfagr posterity throughout its whole course ex- 
perienced in Norway. Such the cost to them of killing good 
Jarl Sigurd, in Greyfell's time ! For 'curses, like chickens,' 
do sometimes visibly ' come home to feed/ as they always, 
either visibly or else invisibly, are punctually sure to do. 



32 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

Hakon Jarl is considerably connected with the Faroer Saga ; 
often mentioned there, and comes out perfectly in character ; 
an altogether worldly-wise man of the roughest type, not 
without a turn for practicality of kindness to those who would 
really be of use to him. His tendencies to magic also are 
not forgotten. 

Hakon left two sons, Eric and Svein, often also mentioned 
in this Saga. On their father's death they fled to Sweden, to 
Denmark, and were busy stirring up troubles in those coun- 
tries against Olaf Tryggveson ; till at length, by a favourable 
combination, under their auspices chiefly, they got his brief 
and noble reign put an end to. Nay, furthermore, Jarl Eric, 
left sons, especially an elder son, named also Eric, who proved 
a sore affliction and a continual stone of stumbling to a new 
generation of Haarfagrs, and so continued the curse of Si- 
gurd's murder upon them. 

Towards the end of this Hakon's reign it was that the dis- 
covery of America took place (985). Actual discovery, it ap- 
pears, by Eric the Red, an Icelander ; concerning which there 
has been abundant investigation and discussion in our time. 
Ginnungagap (Eoaring Abyss) is thought to be the mouth of 
Behring's Strait in Baffin's Bay ; Big Helloland, the coast from 
Cape Walsingham to near Newfoundland ; Little Helloland, 
Newfoundland itself. Markland was Lower Canada, New 
Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. Southward thence to Chesa- 
peake Bay was called Wine Land (wild grapes still grow in 
Rhode Island, and more luxurianaly further south). White 
Man's Land, called also Great Ireland, is supposed to mean the 
two Carolinas, down to the Southern Cape of Florida. In 
Dahlm ami's opinion, the Irish themselves might even pretend 
to have probably been the first discoverers of America ; they 
had evidently got to Iceland itself before the Norse exiles 
found it out. It appears to be certain that, from the end of 
the tenth century to the early part of the fourteenth, there 
was a dim knowledge of those distant shores extant in the 
Norse mind, and even some straggling series of visits thither 
by roving Norsemen ; though, as only danger, difficulty, and 
no profit resulted, the visits ceased, and the whole matter sank 



REIGN OF OLAF TRYGGVESON. 33 

into oblivion, and, but for the Icelandic talent of writing in 
the long winter nights, would never have been heard of by 
posterity at all. 



CHAPTER VII. 

REIGN OE OLAF TRYGGVESON. 



Olaf Tryggveson (a.d. 995-1000) also makes a great figure 
in the Faroer Saga, and recounts there his early troubles, 
which were strange and many. He is still reckoned a grand 
hero of the North, though his vates now is only Snorro Sturr- 
leson of Iceland. Tryggveson had indeed many adventures 
in the world. His poor mother, Astrid, was obliged to fly 
with him, on murder of her husband by Gunhild — to fly for 
life, three months before her little Olaf was born. She lay 
concealed in reedy island, fled through trackless forests, 
reached her father's with the little baby in her arms, and lay 
deep-hidden there, tended only by her father himself ; Gun- 
hild's pursuit being so incessant, and keen as with sleuth- 
hounds. Poor Astrid had to fly again deviously to Sweden, 
to Esthland (Esthonia), to Russia. In Esthland she was sold 
as a slave, quite parted from her boy, who also was sold, and 
again sold ; but did at last fall in with a kinsman high in the 
Russian service ; did from him find redemption and help, and 
so rose, in a distinguished manner, to manhood, victorious 
self-help, and recovery of his kingdom at last. He even met 
his mother again, he as king of Norway, she as one wonder- 
fully lifted out of darkness into new life, and happiness still 
in store. 

Grown to manhood, Tryggveson, now become acquainted 
with his birth, and with his, alas ! hopeless claims, left Russia 
for the one profession open to him, that of sea-robbery ; and 
did feats without number in that questionable line in many 
seas and scenes, — in England latterly, and most conspicuously 
of all. In one of his courses thither, after long labours in the 
Hebrides, Man, Wales, and down the western shores to the 
very Land's End and farther, he paused at the Scilly Islands 
3 



£4 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY, 

for a little while. He was told of a wonderful Christian her- 
mit living strangely in these sea-solitudes ; had the curiosity 
to seek him out, examine, question, and discourse with him ; 
and, after some reflection, accepted Christian baptism from 
the venerable man. In Snorro the story is involved in mira- 
cle, rumour, and fable ; but the fact itself seems certain, and 
is very interesting ; the great, wild, noble soul of fierce Olaf 
opening to this wonderful gospel of tidings from beyond the 
world, tidings which infinitely transcended all else he had 
ever heard or dreamt of ! It seems certain he was baptized 
here ; date not fixable ; shortly before poor heart-broken Dun- 
stan's death, or shortly after ; most English churches, monas- 
teries especially, lying burnt, under continual visitation of the 
Danes. Olaf, such baptism notwithstanding, did not quit his 
viking profession ; indeed, what other was there for him in 
the world as yet ? 

We mentioned his occasional copartneries with Svein of the 
Double-beard, now become King of Denmark, but the great- 
est of these, and the alone interesting at this time, is their 
joint invasion of England, and Tryggveson's exploits and for- 
tunes there some years after that adventure of baptism in the 
Scilly Isles. Svein and he ' were above a year in England to- 
gether/ this time : they steered up the Thames with "three 
hundred ships and many fighters ; siege, or at least furious 
assault, of London was their first or main enterprise, but it 
did not succeed. The Saxon Chronicle gives date to it, a.d. 
994, and names expressly, as Svein's copartner, ' Olaus, king 
of Norway,' — which he was as yet far from being ; but in re- 
gard to the Year of Grace the Saxon Chronicle is to be held 
indisputable, and, indeed, has the field to itself in this matter. 
Famed Olaf Tryggveson, seen visibly at the siege of London, 
year 994, — it throws a kind of momentary light to us over 
that disastrous whirlpool of miseries and confusions, all dark 
and painful to the fancy otherwise ! This big voyage and 
furious siege of London is Svein Double-beard's first real at- 
tempt to fulfil that vow of his at Father Blue-tooth's ' funeral- 
ale,' and conquer England, — which it is a pity he could not 
yet do. Had London now fallen to him, it is pretty evident 



EEIGN OF OLAF TRYGGVESON. oO 

all England must have followed, and poor England, with Svein 
as king over it, been delivered from immeasurable woes, which 
had to last some two and twenty years farther, before this re- 
sult could be arrived at. But finding London impregnable 
for the moment (no ship able to get athwart the bridge, and 
many Danes perishing in the attempt to do it by swimming), 
Svein and Olaf turned to other enterprises ; all England in a 
manner lying open to them, turn which way they liked. They 
burnt and plundered over Kent, over Hampshire, Sussex; 
they stormed far and wide ; world lying all before them where 
to choose. Wretched Ethelred, as the one invention he could 
fall upon, offered them Danegelt (16,000/. of silver this year, 
but it rose in other years as high as 48,000/.) ; the desperate 
Ethelred, a clear method of quenching fire by pouring oil on 
it ! Svein and Olaf accepted ; withdrew to Southampton — 
Olaf afc least did— till the money was got ready. Strange to 
think of, fierce Svein of the Double-beard, and conquest of 
England by him ; this had at last become the one salutary re- 
sult which remained for that distracted, dow r n-trodden, now 
utterly chaotic and anarchic country. A conquering Svein, 
followed by an ably and earnestly administrative, as well as 
conquering, Knut (whom Dahlmann compares to Charle- 
magne), were thus by the mysterious destinies appointed the 
effective saviours of England. 

Tryggveson, on this occasion, was a good while at South- 
ampton ; and roamed extensively about, easily victorious over 
everything, if resistance were attempted, but finding little or 
none ; and acting now in a peaceable or even friendly capac- 
ity. In the Southampton country he came in contact with the 
then Bishop of "Winchester, afterwards Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, excellent Elphegus, still dimly decipherable to us as a 
man of great natural discernment, piety, and inborn veracity ; 
a hero-soul, probably of real brotherhood with Olaf s own. 
He even made court visits to King Ethelred ; one visit to him 
at Andover of a very serious nature. By Elphegus, as we can 
discover, he was introduced into the real depths of the Chris- 
tian faith. Elphegus, with due solemnity of apparatus, in 
presence of the king, at Andover baptized Olaf anew T , and to 



3G EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

him Olaf engaged that he would never plunder in England 
any more ; Which promise, too, he kept. In fact, not long 
after, S vein's conquest of England being in an evidently for- 
ward state, Tryggveson (having made, withal, a great English 
or Irish marriage, — a dowager princess, who had voluntarily 
fallen in love' with him, — see Snorro fortius fine romantic 
fact ! ) mainly resided in our island for two or three years, or 
else in Dublin, in the precincts of the Danish Court there in 
the Sister Isle. Accordingly it was in Dublin, as above noted, 
that Hakon's spy found him ; and from the Liffey that his 
squadron sailed, through the Hebrides, through the Orkneys, 
plundering and baptizing in their strange way, towards such 
success as we have seen. 

Tryggveson made a stout, and, in effect, victorious and 
glorious struggle for himself as king. Daily and hourly vigi- 
lmt to do so, often enough by soft and even merry methods, 
— for he was a witty, jocund man, and had a fine ringing laugh 
in him, and clear pregnant words ever ready, — or if soft 
methods would not serve, then by hard and even hardest he 
put down a great deal of miscellaneous anarchy in Norway ; 
was especially busy against heathenism (devil-worship and its 
rites) : this, indeed, may be called the focus and heart of all 
his royal endeavour in Norway, and of all the troubles he now 
had with his people there. For this was a serious, vital, all- 
comprehending matter : devil-worship, a thing not to be tol- 
erated one moment longer than you could by any method help ! 
Olaf's success was intermittent, of varying complexion ; but 
his effort, swift or slow, was strong and continual ; and on the 
whole he did succeed. Take a sample or two of that wonder- 
ful conversion process : 

At one of his first Things he found the Bonders all assembled 
in arms ; resolute to the death seemingly, against his proposal 
and him. Tryggveson said little ; waited impassive, " What 
your reasons are, good men ? " One zealous Bonder started 
up in passionate parliamentary eloquence ; but after a sentence 
or two broke down ; one, and then another, and still another, 
and remained all three staring in open-mouthed silence there ! 
The peasant-proprietors accepted the phenomenon as ludicrous, 



REIGN OF OLAF TRYGGVESON. ol 

perhaps partly as miraculous withal, and consented to baptism 
this time. 

On another occasion of a Thing, which had assembled near 
some heathen temple to meet him, — temple where Hakon Jarl 
had done much repairing, and set up many idol figures and 
sumptuous ornaments, regardless of expense, especially a very 
big and splendid Thor, with massive gold collar round the 
neck of him, not the like of it in Norway, — King Tryggveson 
was clamorously invited by the Bonders to step in there, 'en- 
lighten his eyes, and partake of the sacred rites. Instead of 
which he rushed into the temple with his armed men ; smashed 
down, with his own battle-axe, the god Thor prostrate on the 
floor at one stroke, to set an example ; and in a few minutes 
had the whole Hakon Pantheon wrecked ; packing up mean- 
while all the gold and preciosities accumulated there (not for- 
getting Thor's illustrious gold collar, of which we shall hear 
again), and victoriously took the plunder home with him for 
his own royal uses and behoof of the state. 

In other cases, though a friend to strong measures, he had 
to hold in, and await the favourable moment. Thus once, in 
beginning a parliamentary address, so soon as he came to touch 
upon Christianity, the Bonders rose in murmurs, in vocifera- 
tions and jingling of arms, which quite drowned the royal 
voice ; declared, They had taken arms against King Hakon the 
Good to compel him to desist from his Christian proposals ; 
and they did not think King Olaf a higher man than him 
(Hakon the Good). The King then said, ' He purposed com- 
ing to them next Yule to their great sacrificial feast, to see for 
himself what their customs were,' which pacified the Bonders 
for this time. The appointed place of meeting was again a 
Hakon-Jarl Temple, not yet done to ruin ; chief shrine in those 
Trondhjem parts I believe : there should Tryggveson appear 
at Yule. Well, but before Yule came, Tryggveson made a 
great banquet in his palace at Trondhjem, and invited far and 
wide, all manner of important persons out of the district as 
guests there. Banquet hardly done, Tryggveson gave some 
slight signal, upon which armed men strode in, seized eleven 
of these principal persons, and the King said : ' Since he him- 



38 EARLY KINO 8 OF NORWAY. 

self was to become a heathen again, and do sacrifice, it was 
his purpose to do it in the highest form, namely, that of Human 
Sacrifice ; and this time not of slaves and malefactors, but of 
the best men in the country ! ' In which stringent circum- 
stances the eleven seized persons, and company at large, gave 
unanimous consent to baptism ; straightway received the same, 
and abjured their idols ; but were not permitted to go home 
till they had left, in sons, brothers, and other precious rela- 
tive's, sufficient hostages in the King's hands. 

By unwearied industry of this and better kinds, Tryggveson 
had trampled down idolatry, so far as form went, — how far in 
substance may be greatly doubted. But it is to be remem- 
bered withal, that always on the back of these compulsory 
adventures there followed English bishops, priests, and preach- 
ers ; whereby to the open-minded, conviction, to all degrees 
of it, was attainable, while silence and passivity became the 
duty or necessity of the unconvinced party. 

In about two years Norway was all gone over with a rough 
harrow of conversion. Heathenism at least constrained to be 
silent and outwardly conformable. Tryggveson next turned 
his attention to Iceland, sent one Thangbrand, priest from Sax- 
ony, of wonderful qualities, military as well as theological, to 
try and convert Iceland. Thangbrand made a few converts ; 
for Olaf had already many estimable Iceland friends, whom he 
liked much, and was much liked by ; and conversion was the 
ready road to his favour. Thangbrand, I find, lodged with 
Hall of Sid a (familiar acquaintance of ' Burnt Njal,' whose 
Saga has its admirers among us even now). Thangbrand con- 
verted Hail and one or two other leading men ; but in general 
he was reckoned quarrelsome and blusterous rather than elo- 
quent and piously convincing. Two skalds of repute made 
biting lampoons upon Thangbrand, whom Thangbrand, by 
two opportunities that offered, cut down and did to death be- 
cause of their skaldic quality. Another he killed with his own 
hand, I know not for what reason. In brief, after about a 
year, Thangbrand returned to Norway and king Olaf, declar- 
ing the Icelanders to be a perverse, satirical, and inconvertible 
people, having himself, the record says, been ' the death of 



BEIGN OF OLAF TEYGGVESON. 39 

three men there.' King Olaf was in high rage at this result ; 
but was persuaded by the Icelanders about him to try farther, 
and by a milder instrument. He accordingly chose one 
Thormod, a pious, patient, and kindly man, who, within the 
next year or so, did actually accomplish the matter ; namely, 
get Christianity, by open vote, declared at Thingvalla by the 
general Thing of Iceland there ; the roar of a volcanic eruption 
at the right moment rather helping the conclusion, if I rec- 
ollect. Whereupon Olaf s joy was no doubt great. 

One general result of these successful operations was the 
discontent, to all manner of degrees, on the part of many 
Norse individuals, against this glorious and victorious, but 
peremptory and terrible king of theirs. Tryggveson, I fancy, 
did not much regard all that ; a man of joyful, cheery tem- 
per, habitually contemptuous of danger. Another trivial mis- 
fortune that befel in these conversion operations, and became 
important to him; he did not even know of, and would have 
much despised if he had. It was this : Sigrid, queen-dowager 
of Sweden, thought to be among the most shining women of 
the w T orld, was also known for one of the most imperious, re- 
vengeful, and relentless, and had got for herself the name of 
Sigrid the Proud. In her high widowhood she had naturally 
many wooers ; but treated them in a manner unexampled. 
Two of her suitors, a simultaneous Two, were, King Harald 
Grsenske (a cousin of King Tryggveson's, and kind of king in 
some district, by sufferance of the late Hakorrs), — this luck- 
less Grsenske and the then Russian Sovereign as well, name 
not worth mentioning, were zealous suitors of Queen-Dowager 
Sigrid, and were perversely slow to accept the negative, which 
in her heart was inexorable for both, though the expression 
of it could not be quite so emphatic. By ill-luck for them 
they came once, — from the far West, Graenske ; from the far 
East, the Russian, — and arrived both together at Sigrid's 
court, to prosecute their importunate, and to her odious and 
tiresome suit ; much, how very much, to her impatience and 
disdain. She lodged them both in some old mansion, which 
she had contiguous, and got compendiously furnished for 
them ; and there, I know not w T hether on the first or on the 



40 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

second, or on what following night, this unparalleled Queen 
Sigrid had the house surrounded, set on fire, and the two 
suitors and their people burnt to ashes ! No more of bother 
from these two at least ! This appears to be a fact ; and it 
could not be unknown to Tryggveson. 

In spite of which, however, there went from Tryggveson, 
who was now a widower, some incipient marriage proposals 
to this proud widow ; by whom they were favourably re- 
ceived ; as from the brightest man in all the world, they 
might seem worth being. Now, in one of these anti-heathen 
onslaughts of King Olaf's on the idol temples of Hakon — (I 
think it was that case where Olafs own battle-axe struck 
down the monstrous refulgent Thor, and conquered an im- 
mense gold ring from the neck of him, or from the door of 
his temple) — a huge gold ring, at any rate, had come into 
Olaf's hands ; and this he bethought him might be a pretty 
present to Queen Sigrid, the now favourable, though the 
proud. Sigrid received the ring with joy ; fancied what a 
collar it would make for her own fair neck ; but noticed that 
her two goldsmiths, weighing it on their fingers, exchanged a 
glance. " What is that ?" exclaimed Queen Sigrid. ''Noth- 
ing," answered they, or endeavoured to answer, dreading 
mischief. But Sigrid compelled them to break open the 
ring ; and there was found, all along the inside of it, an oc- 
cult ring of copper, not a heart of gold at all ! " Ha," said 
the proud Queen, flinging it away, "he that could deceive in 
this matter can deceive in many others ! " And was in hot 
wrath with Olaf ; though, by degrees, again she took milder 
thoughts. 

Milder thoughts, we say ; and consented to a meeting next 
autumn at some half-way station, where their great business 
might be brought to a happy settlement and betrothment. 
Both Olaf Tryggveson and the high dowager appear to have 
been tolerably of willing mind at this meeting ; but Olaf in- 
terposed, what was always one condition with him, " Thou 
must consent to baptism, and give up thy idol gods." "They 
are the gods of all my forefathers," answered the lady ; 
" choose thou what gods thou pleasest, but leave me mine." 



REIGN OF OLAF TRYGGVESON. 41 

Whereupon an altercation ; and Tryggveson, as was his wont, 
towered up into shining wrath, and exclaimed at last, " Why 
should I care about thee then, old faded heathen creature ? " 
And impatiently wagging his glove, hit her, or slightly 
switched her, on the face with it, and contemptuously turn- 
ing away, walked out of the adventure. " This is a feat that 
may cost thee dear one day," said Sigrid. And in the end it 
came to do so, little as the magnificent Olaf deigned to think 
of it at the moment. 

One of the last scuffles I remember of Olaf s having with 
his refractory heathens was at a Thing in Hordaland or Eoga- 
land, far in the North, where the chief opposition hero was 
one Jaernskaegg ('ironbeard,' Scottice 'Aim-shag', as it 
were !). 'Here again was a grand heathen temple, Hakon 
Jarl's building, with a splendid Thor in it and much idol fur- 
niture. The King stated what was his constant wish here as 
elsewhere, but had no sooner entered upon the subject of 
Christianity than universal murmur, rising into clangour and 
violent dissent, interrupted him, and Ironbeard took up the 
discourse in reply. Ironbeard did not break down ; on the 
contrary, he, with great brevity, emphasis, and clearness, sig- 
nified "that the proposal to reject their old gods was in the 
highest degree unacceptable to this Thing ; that it was con- 
trary to bargain, withal ; so that if it were insisted on they 
would have to fight with the King about it ; and in fact were 
now ready to do so." In reply to this, Olaf, without word ut- 
tered, but merely with some signal to the trusty armed men 
he had with him, rushed off to the temple close at hand ; 
burst into it, shutting the door behind him ; smashed Thor 
& Co. to destruction ; then reappearing victorious, found 
much confusion outside, and, in particular, what was a most 
important item, the rugged Ironbeard done to death by Olaf's 
men in the interim. Which entirely disheartened the Thing 
from fighting at that moment; having now no leader who 
dared to head them in so dangerous an enterprise. So that 
every one departed to digest his rage in silence as he could. 

Matters having cooled for a week or two, there was another 
Thing held ; in which King Olaf testified regret for the quar- 



42 EARLY KIN OS OF N011WAY. 

rel that had fallen out, readiness to pay what mulct was due 
by law for that unlucky homicide of Ironbeard by his people ; 
and, withal, to take the fair daughter of Ironbeard to wife, if 
all would comply and be friends with him in other matters ; 
which was the course resolved on as most convenient : accept 
baptism, we ; marry Jaernskaegg's daughter, you. This bar- 
gain held on both sides. The wedding, too, was celebrated, 
but that took rather a strange turn. On the morning of the 
bride-night, Olaf, who had not been sleeping, though his fair 
partner thought he had, opened his eyes, and saw, with as- 
tonishment, his fair partner aiming a long knife ready to 
strike home upon him ! Which at once ended their wedded 
life ; poor Demoiselle Ironbeard immediately bundling off 
with her attendants home again ; King Olaf into the apart- 
ment of his servants, mentioning there what had happened, 
and forbidding any of them to follow her. 

Olaf Tryggveson, though his kingdom was the smallest o: 
the Norse Three, had risen to a renown over all the Norse 
world which neither he of Denmark nor he of Sweden could 
pretend to rival. A magnificent, far-shining man ; more ex- 
pert in all 'bodily exercises,' as the Norse called them, than 
any man had ever been before him, or after was. Could keep 
five daggers in the air, always catching the proper fifth by its 
handle, and sending it aloft again ; could shoot supremely, 
throw a javelin with either hand ; and, in fact, in battle 
usually threw two together. Tnese, with swimming, climb- 
ing, leaping, were the then admirable Fine Arts of the North ; 
in all which Tryggveson appears to have been the Raphael 
and the Michael Angelo at once. Essentially definable, too, 
if we look well into him, as a wild bit of real heroism, in such 
rude guise and environment ; a high, true, and great human 
soul. A jovial burst of laughter in him, too ; a bright, airy, 
wise way of speech ; dressed beautifully and with care ; a 
man admired and loved exceedingly by those he liked ; 
dreaded as death by those he did not like. 'Hardly any 
king,' says Snorro, ' was ever so well obeyed, by one class out 
of zeal and love, by the rest out of dread.' His glorious 
course, however, was not to last long. 



e 



REIGN OF OLAF TRYGGVESOK 43 

King Svein of the Double-beard had not yet completed his 
conquest of England, — by no means yet, some thirteen horrid 
years of that still before him ! — when, over in Denmark, he 
found that complaints against him and intricacies had arisen, 
on the part principally of one Burislav, King of the Wends 
(far up the Baltic), and in a less degree with the King of Swe- 
den and other minor individuals. Svein earnestly applied 
himself to settle these, and have his hands free. Burislav, an 
aged heathen gentleman, proved reasonable and conciliatory ; 
so, too, the King of Sweden, and Dowager Queen Sigrid, his 
managing mother. Bargain in both these cases got sealed 
and crowned by marriage. Svein, who had become a widower 
lately, now wedded Sigrid ; and might think, possibly enough, 
he had got a proud bargain, though a heathen one. Burislav 
also insisted on marriage with Princess Thyri, the Double- 
beard's sister. Thyri, inexpressibly disinclined to wed an 
aged heathen of that stamp, pleaded hard with her brother ; 
but the Double-bearded was inexorable ; Thyri's wailings and 
entreaties went for nothing. With some guardian foster- 
brother, and a serving-maid or two, she had to go on this 
hated journey. Old Burislav, at sight of her, blazed out into 
marriage feast of supreme magnificence, and was charmed to 
see her ; but Thyri would not join the marriage party, re- 
fused to eat with it or sit with it at all. Day after day, for 
six days, flatly refused ; and after nightfall of the sixth, glided 
out with her foster-brother into the woods, into by-paths and 
inconceivable wanderings ; and, in effect, got home to Den- 
mark. Brother Svein was not for the moment there ; prob- 
ably enough gone to England again. But Thyri knew too 
well he would not allow her to stay here, or anywhere that he 
could help, except with the old heathen she had just fled 
from. 

Thyri, looking round the world, saw no likely road for her, 
but to Olaf Tryggveson in Norway ; to beg protection from 
the most heroic man she knew of in the world. Olaf, except 
by renown, was not known to her ; but by renown he well 
was. Olaf, at sight of her, promised protection and asylum 
against all mortals. Nay, in discoursing with Thyri Olaf per- 



£ l EA RL Y KIX GS OF NOR WA Y. 

ceivecl more and more clearly what a fine handsome being, 
soul and body, Thyri was ; and in a short space of time 
winded up by proposing to Thyri, who, humbly, and we may 
fancy with what secret joy, consented to say yes, and become 
Queen of Norway. In the due months they had a little son, 
Harald ; who, it is credibly recorded, was the joy of both his 
parents ; but who, to their inexpressible sorrow, in about a year 
died, and vanished from them. This, and one other fact now 
to be mentioned, is all the wedded history we have of Thyri. 

The other fact is, that Thyri had, by inheritance or cove- 
nant, not depending on her marriage with old Burislav, con- 
siderable properties in Wendland, which she often reflected 
might be not a little behoovef ul to her here in Norway, where 
her civil-list was probably but straitened. She spoke of this 
to her husband ; but her husband would take no hold, merely 
made her gifts, and said, "Pooh, pooh, can't we live without 
old Burislav and his Wendland properties ? " So that the 
lady sank into ever deeper anxiety and eagerness about this 
Wendland object ; took to weeping ; sat weeping wdiole days ; 
and when Olaf asked, "What ails thee, then?" would an- 
swer, or did answer once, "What a different man my father 
Harald Gormson was" (vulgarly called Blue-tooth), "com- 
pared with some that are now kings ! For no King Svein in 
the world would Harald Gormson have given up his own or 
his wife's just rights ! " Whereupon Tryggveson started up, 
exclaiming in some heat, " Of thy brother Svein I never was 
afraid ; if Svein and I meet in contest, it w T ill not be Svein, I 
believe, that conquers ; " and went off in a towering fume. 
Consented, however, at last, had to consent, to get his fine 
fleet equipped and armed, and decide to sail with it to Wend- 
land to have speech and settlement with King Burislav. 

Tryggveson had already ships and navies that were the 
wouder of the North. Especially in building war-ships — the 
Crane, the Serpent, last of all the Long Serpent ] — he had, for 
size, for outward beauty, and inward perfection of equip- 
ment, transcended all example. 

1 His Long Serpent, judged by some to be of the size of a frigate of 
forty-fire guns. — Laing. 



REIGIV OF OLAF TRYGGVESON. 45 

This new sea expedition became an object of attention to 
all neighbours ; especially Queen Sigrid the Proud and Svein 
Forkbeard, her now king, were attentive to it. 

"This insolent Tryggveson," Queen Sigrid would often 
say, and had long been saying, to her Svein, " to marry thy 
sister without leave had or asked of thee ; and now flaunting 
forth his war navies, as if he, king only of paltry Norway, 
were the big hero of the North ! Why do you suffer it, you 
kings really great ? " 

By such persuasions, and reiterations, King Svein of Den- 
mark, King Olaf of Sweden, and Jarl Eric, now a great man 
there, grown rich by prosperous sea-robbery and other good 
management, were brought to take the matter up, and com- 
bine strenuously for destruction of King Olaf Tryggveson on 
this grand Wendland expedition of his. Fleets and forces 
were with best diligence got ready ; and, withal, a certain 
Jarl Sigwald, of Jomsburg, chieftain of the Jomsvikings, a 
powerful, plausible, and cunning man, was appointed to find 
means of joining himself to Tryggveson's grand voyage ; 
of getting into Tryggveson's confidence, and keeping Svein 
Forkbeard, Eric, and the Swedish king aware of all his 
movements. 

King Olaf Tryggveson, unacquainted with all this, sailed 
away in summer, with his splendid fleet ; went through the 
Belts with prosperous winds, under bright skies, to the ad- 
miration of both shores. Such a fleet, with its shining Ser- 
pents, long and short, and perfection of equipment and ap- 
pearance, the Baltic never saw before. Jarl Sigwald joined 
with new ships by the way : "Had," he too, " a visit to King 
Burislav to pay ; how could he ever do it in better company ?" 
and studiously and skilfully ingratiated himself with King 
Olaf. Old Burislav, when they arrived, proved altogether 
courteous, handsome, and amenable ; agreed at once to Olaf's 
claims for his now queen, did the rites of hospitality with a 
generous plenitude to Olaf ; who cheerily renewed acquaint- 
ance with that country, known to him in early days (the 
cradle of his fortunes in the viking line), and found old 
friends there still surviving, joyful to meet him again. Jarl 



4G EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

Sigwald encouraged these delays, King Svein & Co. not being 
yet quite ready. " Get ready ! " Sigwald directed them, and 
they diligently did. Olafs men, their business now done, 
were impatient to be home, and grudged every day of loiter- 
ing there ; but, till Sigwald pleased, such his power of flatter- 
ing and cajoling Tryggveson, they could not get away. 

At length, Sigwald's secret messengers reporting all ready 
on the part of Svein & Co., Olaf took farewell of Burislav and 
Wendland, and all gladly sailed away. Svein, Eric, and the 
Swedish king, with their combined fleets, lay in wait behind 
some cape in a safe little bay of some island, then called 
Svolde, but not in our time to be found : the Baltic tumults 
in the fourteenth century having swallowed it, as some think, 
and leaving us uncertain whether it was in the neighbour- 
hood of Eiigen Island or in the Sound of Elsinore. There 
lay Svein, Eric, & Co. waiting till Tryggveson and his fleet 
came up, Sigwald's spy messengers daily reporting what 
progress he and it had made. At length, one bright summer 
morning, the fleet made appearance, sailing in loose order, 
Sigwald, as one acquainted with the shoal places, steering 
ahead, and showing them the way. 

Snorro rises into one of his pictorial fits, seized with en- 
thusiasm at the thought of such a fleet, and reports to U3 
largely in what order Tryggveson 's winged Coursers of the 
Deep, in long series, for perhaps an hour or more, came on, 
and what the three potentates, from their knoll of vantage, 
said of each as it hove in sight. Svein thrice over guessed 
this and the other noble vessel to be the Long Serpent ; Eric 
always correcting him : " No, that is not the Long Serpent 
yet " (and aside always), " Nor shall you be lord of it, King, 
when it does come." The Long Serpent itself did make ap- 
pearance. Eric, Svein, and the Swedish king hurried on 
board, and pushed out of their hiding-place into the open sea. 
Treacherous Sigwald, at the beginning of all this, had sud- 
denly doubled that cape of theirs, and struck into the bay out 
of sight, leaving the foremost Tryggveson ships astonished, 
and uncertain what to do, if it were not simply to strike sail 
and wait till Olaf himself with the Long Serpent arrived. 



FcEIGN OF OLAF TBTCGVESON. 47 

Olafs chief captains, seeing the enemy's huge fleet come 
out, and how the matter lay, strongly advised King Olaf to 
elude this stroke of treachery, and, with all sail, hold on his 
course, fight being now on so unequal terms. Snorro says, the 
King, high on the quarter-deck where he steed, replied, 
" Strike the sails ! — never shall men of mine think of flight. 
I never fled from battle. Let God dispose of my life ; but 
flight I will never take.'*' And so the battle arrangements 
immediately began, and the battle with all fury went loose ; 
and lasted hour after hour, till almost sunset, if I well recol- 
lect. " Olaf stood on the Serpent's quarter-deck," says 
Snorro, " high over the others. He had a gilt shield and a 
helmet inlaid with gold ; over his armour he had a short red 
coat, and w T as easily distinguished from other men." Snorro's 
account of the battle is altogether animated, graphic, and so 
minute that antiquaries gather from it, if so disposed (which 
w T e but little are), what the methods of Norse sea-fighting 
were ; their shooting of arrows, casting of javelins, pitching 
of big stones, ultimately boarding, and mutual clashing and 
smashing, which it would not avail us to speak of here. Olaf 
stood conspicuous all day, throwing javelins, of deadly aim, 
with both hands at once ; encouraging, fighting, and com- 
manding like a highest sea-king. 

The Danish fleet, the Swedish fleet, were, both of them, 
quickly dealt with, and successively withdrew out of shot- 
range. And then Jarl Eric came up, and fiercely grappled 
with the Long Serpent, or, rather, with her surrounding com- 
rades ; and gradually, as they were beaten empty of men, 
with the Long Serpent herself. The fight grew ever fiercer, 
more furious. Eric was supplied with new men from the 
Swedes and Danes ; Olaf had no such resource, except from 
the crews of his own beaten ships ; and at length this also 
failed him ; all his ships, except the Long Serpent, being- 
beaten and emptied. Olaf fought on unyielding. Eric twice 
boarded him, was twice repulsed. Olaf kept his quarter-deck ; 
unconquerable, though left now more and more hopeless, fa- 
tally short of help. A tall young man, called Einar Tamber- 
skclvor, very celebrated and important afterwards in Norway, 



48 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

and already the best archer known, kept busy with his bow. 
Twice he nearly shot Jarl Eric in his ship. " Shoot me that 
man," said Jarl Eric to a bowman near him ; and, just as 
Tamberskelver was drawing his bow the third time, an arrow 
hit it in the^middle and broke it in two. " What is this that 
has broken ? " asked King Olaf. " Norway from thy hand, 
King," answered Tamberskelver. Tryggveson's men, he ob- 
served with surprise, were striking violently on Eric's ; but to 
no purpose ; nobody fell. " How is this ? " asked Tryggve- 
son. " Our swords are notched and blunted, King ; they do 
not cut." Olaf stept down to his arm-chest ; delivered out 
new swords ; and it was observed as he did it, blood ran 
trickling from his wrist ; but none knew where the wound 
was. Eric boarded a third time. Olaf, left with hardly more 
than one man, sprang overboard (one sees that red coat of 
his still glancing in the evening sun), and sank in the deep 
waters to his long rest. 

Rumour ran among his people that he still was not dead ; 
grounding on some movement by the ships of that traitorous 
Sigwald, they fancied Olaf had dived beneath the keels of his 
enemies, and got away with Sigwald, as Sigwald himself evi- 
dently did. 'Much was hoped, • supposed, spoken/ says one 
old mourning Skald; 'but the truth was, Olaf Tryggveson 
was never seen in Norseland more.' Strangely he remains 
still a shining figure to us ; the wildly beautifullest man, in 
body and in soul, that one has ever heard of in the North. 



CHAPTER Vm. 

JAELS EKIC AND SVEIN. 

Jarl Eric, splendent with this victory, not to speak of that 
over the Jomsburgers with his father long ago, was now made 
Governor of Norway : Governor or quasi-sovereign, with his 
brother, Jarl Svein, as partner, who, however, took but little 
hand in governing ; — and, under the patronage of Svein 
Double-beard and the then Swedish King (Olaf his name, 
Sigiid the Proud, his mother's), administered it, they say, 



JABLS ERIC AND SVEIJST. 49 

with skill and prudence for above fourteen years. Trygg- 
veson's death is understood and laboriously computed to have 
happened in the year 1000 ; but there is no exact chronology 
in these things, but a continual uncertain guessing after such ; 
so that one eye in History as regards them is as if put out ; 
— neither indeed have I yet had the luck to find any decipher- 
able and intelligible map of Norway : so that the other eye of 
History is much blinded withal, and her path through those 
wild regions and epochs is an extremely dim and chaotic one. 
An evil that much demands remedying, and especially wants 
some first attempt at remedying, by enquirers into English 
History ; the whole period from Egbert, the first Saxon king 
of England, on to Edward the Confessor, the last, being 
everywhere completely interwoven with that of their mysteri- 
ous, continually invasive ' Danes,' as they called them, and 
inextricably unintelligible till these also get to be a. little un- 
derstood, and cease to be utterly dark, hideous, and mythical 
to us as they now are. 

King Olaf Tryggveson .is the first Norseman who is ex- 
pressly mentioned to have been in England by our English 
History books, new or old ; and of him it is merely said that 
he had an interview with King Ethelred II. at Andover, of a 
pacific and friendly nature, — though it is absurdly added that 
the noble Olaf was converted to Christianity by that ex- 
tremely stupid Eoyal Person. Greater contrast in an inter- 
view than in this at Andover, between heroic Olaf Tryggveson 
and Ethelred the forever Unready, was not perhaps seen in 
the terrestrial Planet that day. Olaf, or 'Olaus,' or 'Anlaf,' 
as they name him, did ' engage on oath to Ethelred not to 
invade England anymore,' and kept his* promise, they farther 
say. Essentially a truth, as we already know, though the cir- 
cumstances were all different ; and the promise was to a de- 
vout high-priest, not to a crowned Blockhead and cowardly 
Do-nothing. One other ' Olaus ' I find mentioned in our 
Books, two or three centuries before, at a time when there 
existed no such individual, not to speak of several Anlafs, 
who sometimes seem to mean Olaf, and still oftener to mean 
nobody possible. Which occasions not a little obscurity in 
4 



50 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

our early History, says the learned Selden. A thing remedia- 
ble, too, in which, if any Englishman of due genius (or even 
capacity for standing labour), who understood the Icelandic 
and Anglo-Saxon languages, would engage in it, he might do 
a great deal of good, and bring the matter into a compara- 
tively lucid state. Vain aspirations, — or perhaps not al- 
together vain. 

At the time of Olaf Tryggveson's death, and indeed long 
before, King Svein Double-beard had always for chief enter- 
prise the Conquest of England, and followed it by fits with 
extreme violence and impetus ; often advancing largely to- 
wards a successful conclusion ; but never, for thirteen years 
yet, getting it concluded. He possessed long since all Eng- 
land north of Watting Street. That is to say, Northumber- 
land, East Anglia (naturally full of Danish settlers by this 
time), were fixedly his ; Mercia, his oftener than not ; "Wessex 
itself, with all the coasts, he was free to visit, and to burn and 
rob in at discretion. There or elsewhere, Ethelred the Un- 
ready had no battle in him whatever ; and, for a forty years 
after the beginning of his reign, England excelled in anarchic 
stupidity, murderous devastation, utter misery, platitude, and 
sluggish contemptibility all the countries one has read of. 
Apparently a very opulent country, too ; a ready skill in such 
arts and fine arts as there were ; Svein 's very ships, they say, 
had their gold dragons, top-mast pennons, and other metallic 
splendours generally wrought for them in England. ' Unex- 
ampled prosperity' in the manufacture way not unknown 
there, it would seem ! But co-existing with such spiritual 
bankruptcy as was also unexampled, one would hope. Read Lu- 
pus (Wulfstan), Archbishop of York's amazing Sermon on the 
subject, 1 addressed to contemporary audiences : setting forth 
such a state of things, — sons selling their fathers, mothers, and 
sisters as Slaves to the Danish robber ; themselves living in 
debauchery, blusterous gluttony, and depravity ; the details 
of which are well-nigh incredible, though clearly stated as 

1 This sermon was printed by Hearne, and is given also by Langebek 
in his excellent collection, Rerum Danicarum Scriptores Medii officii 
Hafniu, 1772-1834. 



JARLS ERIC AMD SVEIN. 51 

things generally known, — the humour of these poor wretches 
sunk to a state of what we may call greasy desperation, ' Let 
us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.' The manner in 
which they treated their own English nuns, if young, good- 
looking, and captive to the Danes, — buying them on a kind 
of brutish or subter-brutish ' Greatest Happiness Principle' 
(for the moment), and by a Joint-Stock arrangement (limited), 
— far transcends all human speech or imagination, and awak- 
ens in one the momentary red-hot thought, The Danes have 
served you right, ye accursed ! The so-called soldiers, one 
finds, made not the least fight anywhere ; could make none, 
led and guided as they were ; and the ' Generals,' often enough 
traitors, always ignorant, and blockheads, were in the habit, 
when expressly commanded to fight, of taking physic, and de- 
claring that nature was incapable of castor-oil and battle both at 
once. This ought to'be explained a little to the modern English 
and their War-Secretaries, who undertake the conduct of ar- 
mies. The undeniable fact is, defeat on defeat was the constant 
fate of the English : during these forty years not one battle in 
which they were not beaten. No gleam of victory or real resist- 
ance till the noble Edmund Ironside (whom it is always strange 
to me how such an Ethelred could produce for son) made his 
appearance, and ran his brief course, like a great and far-seen 
meteor, soon extinguished without result. No remedy for 
England in that base time, but yearly asking the victorious 
plundering, burning, and murdering Danes, £ How much 
money will you take to go away ? ' Thirty thousand pounds 
in silver, which the annual Danegelt soon rose to, continued 
to be about the average yearly sum, though generally on the 
increasing hand ; in the last year I think it had risen to 
seventy-two thousand pounds in silver, raised yearly by a tax 
(Income-Tax of its kind, rudely levied), the worst of all reme- 
dies, good for the day only. Nay, there was one remedy still 
worse, which the miserable Ethelred once tried : that of mas- 
sacring ' all the Danes settled in England ' (practically, of a 
few thousands or hundreds of them), by treachery and a kind 
of Sicilian Vespers. "Which issued, as such things usually do, 
in terrible monition to you not to try the like again ! Issued, 



52 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

namely, in redoubled fury on the Danish part ; new fiercer 
invasion by Svein's Jarl Thorkel ; then by Svein himself ; 
which latter drove the miserable Ethelred, with wife and 
family, into Normandy, to wife's brother, the then Duke there ; 
and ended that miserable struggle by Svein's becoming King 
of England himself. Of this disgraceful massacre, which it 
would appear has been immensely exaggerated in the English 
books, we can happily give the exact date (a. d. 1002) ; and 
also of Svein's victorious accession (a. d. 1013), l — pretty much 
the only benefit one gets out of contemplating such a set of 
objects. 

King Svein's first act was to levy a terribly increased Income- 
Tax for the payment of his army. Svein was levying it with 
a strong-handed diligence, but had not yet done levying it, 
when at Gainsborough one night he suddenly died ; smitten 
dead, once used to be said, by St. Edmund, whilom mur- 
dered king of the East Angles ; who could not bear to see 
his shrine and monastery of St. Edmundsbury plundered by 
the Tyrant's tax-collectors, as they were on the point of being. 
In all ways impossible, however, — Edmund's own death did 
not occur till two years after Svein's. Svein's death, by what- 
ever cause, befell 1014 ; his fleet then lying in the Humber, 
and only Knut/ his eldest son (hardly yet eighteen, count 
some), in charge of it ; who, on short counsel, and arrange- 
ment about this questionable kingdom of his, lifted anchor ; 
made for Sandwich, a safer station at the moment ; 'cut off 
the feet and noses ' (one shudders, and hopes Not, there 
being some discrepancy about it !) of his numerous hostages 
that had been delivered to King Svein, set them ashore ; and 
made for Denmark, his natural storehouse and stronghgld, as 
the hopefullest first-thing he could do. 

Knut soon returned from Denmark, with increase of force 
sufficient for the English problem ; which latter he now soon 
ended in a victorious, and essentially, for himself and chaotic 
England, beneficent manner. Became widely known by and 
by, there and elsewhere, as Knut the Great ; and is thought 

1 Kennet, i. 67 ; Rapin, i 119, 121 (from the Saxon Chronicle both). 

2 Knut bora a.d. 988 according to Munoh's calculation (II, 126). . 









KING OLAF THE THICK-SET'S VIKING BAYS. 03 

by judges of our own day to have really merited that title. 
A most nimble, sharp- striking, clear-thinking, prudent, and 
effective man, who regulated this dismembered and dis- 
tracted England in its Church matters, in its State matters, 
like a real King. Had a Standing Army (House Carles), who 
were well paid, well drilled and disciplined, capable of in- 
stantly quenching insurrection or breakage of the peace ; and 
piously endeavoured (with a signal earnestness, and even de- 
voutness, if we look well) to do justice to all men, and*to 
make all men rest satisfied with justice. In a word, he suc- 
cessfully strapped-up, by every true method and regulation, 
this miserable, dislocated, and dissevered mass of bleeding 
Anarchy into something worthy to be called an England 
again ; — only that he died too soon, and a second ' Conqueror ' 
of us, still weightier of structure, and under improved 
auspices, became possible, and was needed here ! To ap- 
pearance, Knut himself was capable of being a Charlemagne 
of England and the North (as has been already said or 
quoted), had he only lived twice as long as he did. But his 
whole sum of years seems not to have exceeded forty. His 
father Svein of the Forkbeard is reckoned to have been fifty 
or sixty when St. Edmund finished him at Gainsborough. 
We now return to Norway, ashamed of this long circuit 
which has been a truancy more or less. 



CHAPTER IX. 

KING OLAF THE THICK-SEt's VIKING DAYS. 

King Harald Graenske, who, with another from Russia ac- 
cidentally lodging beside him, got burned to death in Sweden, 
courting that unspeakable Sigrid the Proud, was third cousin 
or so to Tryggve, father of our heroic Olaf. Accurately 
counted, he is great-grandson of Rjorn the Chapman, first of 
Haarfagr's sons whom Eric Blood-axe made away with. His 
little * kingdom/ as he called it, was a district named the 
Greenland (Gnieneland) ; he himself was one of those little 
Haarfagr kinglets whom Hakon Jarl was content to leave 



54 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

reigning, since they would keep the peace with him. Harald 
had a loving wife of his own, Aasta the name of her, soon ex- 
pecting the birth of her and his pretty babe, named Olaf, — at 
the time he went on that deplorable Swedish adventure, the 
foolish, fated creature, and ended self and kingdom altogether. 
Aasta was greatly shocked ; composed herself however ; mar- 
ried a new husband, Sigurd Syr, a kinglet, and a great-grand- 
son of Harald Fairhair, a man of great wealth, prudence, and 
influence in those countries ; in whose house, as favourite and 
well-beloved stepson, little Olaf was wholesomely and skil- 
fully brought up. In Sigurd's house he had, withal, a special 
tutor entertained for him, one Rane, known as Rane the Far- 
travelled, by whom he could be trained, from the earliest 
basis, in Norse accomplishments and arts. New children 
came, one or two ; but Olaf, from his mother, seems always 
to have known that he was the distinguished and royal article 
there. One day his foster-father, hurrying to leave home on 
business, hastily bade Olaf, no other being by, saddle his 
horse for him. Olaf went out with the saddle, chose the big- 
gest he-goat about, saddled that, and brought it to the 
door by way of horse. Old Sigurd, a most grave man, grinned 
sardonically at the sight. " Ha, I see thou hast no mind to 
take commands from me ; thou art of too high a humour to 
take commands." To which, says Snorro, Boy Olaf answered 
little except by laughing, till Sigurd saddled for himself, and 
rode away. His mother Aasta appears to have been a 
thoughtful, prudent woman, though always with a tierce royal- 
ism at the bottom of her memory, and a secret implacability 
on that head. 

At the age of twelve Olaf went to sea ; furnished with a 
little fleet, and skilful sea-counsellor, expert old Rane, by his 
foster-father, and set out to push his fortune in the world. 
Rane was steersman and counsellor in these incipient times ; 
but the crew always called Olaf ' King,' though at first, as 
Snorro thinks, except it were in the hour of battle, he merely 
pulled an oar. He cruised and fought in this capacity on 
many seas and shores ; passed several years, perhaps till the 
age of nineteen or twenty, in this wild element and way of 



KING OLAF THE THICK-SET'S VIKING DAYS. O'o 

life ; fighting always in a glorious and distinguished manner. 
In the hour of battle, diligent enough ' to amass property,' as 
the Vikings termed it ; and in the long days and nights of 
sailing, given over, it is likely, to his own thoughts and the 
unfathomable dialogue with the ever-moaning brine ; not the 
worst High School a man could have, and indeed infinitely 
preferable to the most that are going even now, for a high and 
deep young soul. 

His first distinguished expedition was to Sweden : natural 
to go thither first, to avenge his poor father's death, were it 
nothing more. Which he did, the Skalds say, in a distin- 
guished manner ; making victorious and handsome battle for 
himself in entering Maelare Lake ; and in getting out of it 
again, after being frozen there all winter, showing still more 
surprising, almost miraculous contrivance and dexterity. 
This was the first of his glorious victories ; of which the 
Skalds reckon up some fourteen or thirteen very glorious in- 
deed, mostly in the Western and Southern countries, most of 
all in England ; till the name of Olaf Haraldson became quite 
famous in the Viking and strategic world. He seems really 
to have learned the secrets of his trade, and to have been, 
then and afterwards, for vigilance, contrivance, valour, and 
promptitude of execution, a superior fighter. Several ex- 
ploits recorded of him betoken, in simple forms, what may 
be called a military genius. 

The principal, and to us the alone interesting, of his ex- 
ploits seem to have lain in England, and, what is further no- 
table, always on the anti-Svein side. English books do not 
mention him at all that I can find ; but it is fairly credible 
that, as the Norse records report, in the end of Efchelred's 
reign, he was the ally or hired general of Ethelred, and did a 
great deal of sea-fighting, watching, sailing, and sieging for 
this miserable king and Edmund Ironside, his son. Snorro 
says expressly, London, the impregnable city, had to be be- 
sieged again for Ethelred's behoof (in the interval between 
Svein's death and young Knut's getting back from Denmark), 
and that our Olaf Haraldson w T as the great engineer and vic- 
torious captor of London on that singular occasion, — London 



56 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

captured for the first time. The Bridge, as usual, Snorro says, 
offered almost insuperable obstacles. But the engineering 
genius of Olaf contrived huge f platforms of wainscoting ' (old 
walls of wooden houses, in fact), ( bound together by w T ithes ; ' 
these, carried steadily aloft above the ships, will (thinks Olaf) 
considerably secure them and us from the destructive mis- 
siles, big boulder stones, and other mischief profusely show- 
ered down on us, till we get under the Bridge with axes and 
cables, and do some good upon it. Olaf's plan was tried ; 
most of the other ships, in spite of their wainscoting and 
withes, recoiled on reaching the Bridge, so destructive were 
the boulder and other missile showers. But Olaf's ship and 
self got actually under the Bridge ; fixed all manner of cables 
there ; and then, with the river current in their favour, and 
the frightened ships rallying to help in this safer part of the 
enterprise, tore out the important piles and props, and fairly 
broke the poor Bridge, wholly or partly, down into the river, 
and its Danish defenders into immediate surrender. That is 
Snorro's account. 

On a previous occasion, Olaf had been deep in a hopeful 
combination with Ethelred's tw T o younger sons, Alfred and 
Edward, afterwards King Edward the Confessor : That they 
two should sally out from Normandy in strong force, unite 
with Olaf in ditto, and, landing on the Thames, do something 
effectual for themselves. But impediments, bad weather or 
the like, disheartened the poor Princes, and it came to noth- 
ing. Olaf was much in Normandy, what they then called 
Walland ; a man held in honour by those Norman Dukes. 

What amount of ' property ' he had amassed I do not know, 
but could prove, were it necessary, that he had acquired some 
tactical or even strategic faculty and real talent for war. At 
Lymfjord, in Jutland, but some years after this (a.d. 1027), he 
had' a sea-battle with the great Knut himself, — ships com- 
bined with flood-gates, with roaring, artificial deluges ; right 
well managed by King Olaf ; which were within a hair's- 
breadth of destroying Knut, now become a King and Great ; 
and did in effect send him instantly running. But of this 
more particularly by and by. 



KING OLAF THE THICK-SET'S VIKING DAYS. 57 

"What still more surprises rue is the mystery, where Olaf, in 
this wandering, fighting, sea-roving life, acquired his deeply 
religious feeling, his intense adherence to the Christian Faith. 
I suppose it had been in England, where many pious persons, 
priestly and other, were still to be met with, that Olaf had 
gathered these doctrines ; and that in those his unfathomable 
dialogues with the ever-moaning brine, they had struck root 
downwards in the soul of him, and borne fruit upwards to the 
degree so conspicuous afterwards. It is certain he became a 
deeply pious man during these long Viking cruises ; and di- 
rected all his strength, when strength and authority were lent 
him, to establishing the Christian religion in his country, and 
suppressing and abolishing Vikingism there ; both of which 
objects, and their respective worth and unworth, he must 
himself have long known so well. 

It was well on in a.d. 1016 that Knut gained his last victory, 
at Ashdon, in Essex, where the earth pyramids and antique 
church near by still testify the thankful piety of Knut, — or, at 
lowest, his joy at haying won instead of lost and perished, as 
he was near doing there. And it was still this same year when 
the noble Edmund Ironside, after forced partition-treaty ' in 
the Isle of Alney,' got scandalously murdered, and Knut be- 
came indisputable sole king of England, and decisively set- 
tled himself to his work of governing there. In the year be- 
fore either of which events, while all still hung uncertain for 
Knut, and even Eric Jarl of Norway had to be summoned in 
aid of him, — in that year 1015, as one might naturally guess, 
and as all Icelandic hints and indications lead us to date the 
thing, Olaf had decided to give up Vikingism in all its forms ; 
to return to Norway, and try whether he could not assert the 
place and career that belonged to him there. Jarl Eric had 
vanished with all his war forces towards England, leaving only 
a boy, Hakon, as successor, and Svein, his own brother, — a 
quiet man, who had always avoided war. Olaf landed in Nor- 
way without obstacle ; but decided to be quiet till he had him- 
self examined and consulted friends. 

His reception by his mother Aasta was of the kindest and 
proudest, and is lovingly described by Snorro. A pretty 



58 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

idyllic or epic piece, of Norse Homeric t} r pe : How Aasta, 
hearing of her son's advent, set all her maids and menials to 
work at the top of their speed ; despatched a runner to the 
harvest- field, where her husband Sigurd was, to warn him to 
come home and dress. How Sigurd was standing among his 
harvest folk, reapers and binders ; and what he had on, — broad 
slouch hat, with veil (against the midges), blue kirtle, hose of 
I forget what colour, with laced boots ; and in his hand a stick 
with silver head and ditto ring upon it ; — a personable old 
gentleman, of the eleventh century, in tho-e parts. Sigurd 
was cautious, prudentially cunctatory, though heartily friendly 
in his counsel to Olaf, as to the King question. Aasta had a 
Spartan tone in her wild maternal heart ; and assures Olaf 
that she, with a half-reproachful glance towards Sigurd, will 
stand by him to the death in this his just and noble enter- 
prise. Sigurd promises to consult farther in his neighbour- 
hood, and to correspond by messages ; the result is, Olaf, re- 
solutely pushing forward himself, resolves to call a Thing, and 
openly claim his kingship there. The Thing was itself willing 
enough : opposition parties do here and there bestir them- 
selves ; but Olaf is always swifter than they. Five kinglets 
somewhere in the Uplands, 1 — all descendants of Haarfagr, but 
averse to break the peace, which Jarl Eric and Hakon Jarl 
both have always willingly allowed to peaceable people, — seem 
to be the main opposition party. These five take the field 
against Olaf with what force they have ; Olaf, one night, by 
beautiful celerity and strategic practice which a Friedrich or 
a Turenne might have approved, surrounds these Five ; and 
when morning breaks, there is nothing for them but either 
death or else instant surrender, and swearing of fealty to King 
Olaf. Which latter branch of the alternative they gladly ac- 
cept, the whole five of them, and go home again. 

This was a beautiful bit of war-practice by King Olaf on 
land. By another stroke still more compendious at sea, he 
had already settled poor young Hakon, and made him peace- 
able for a long while. Olaf, by diligent quest and spy-mes- 

1 Snoi'ro, Laing's Translation, vol. ii. p. 31 et seq. t will minutely spe- 
cify. 



I 



KINO OLAF THE THICK-SET'S VIKING DAYS. 59 

saging, had ascertained that Hakon, just returning from Den- 
mark and farewell to Papa and Knut, both now under way for 
England, was coasting north towards Trondhjem ; and in- 
tended on or about such a day to land in such and such a fjord 
towards the end of this Trondhjem voyage. Olaf at once 
mans two big ships, steers through the narrow mouth of said 
fjord, moors one ship on the north shore, another on the 
south ; fixes a strong cable, well sunk under water, to the 
capstans of these two ; and in all quietness w r aits for Hakon. 
Before many hours, Hakon's royal or quasi-royal barge steers 
gayly into this fjord ; is a little surprised, perhaps, to see 
within the jaws of it two big ships at anchor ; but steers gal- 
lantly along, nothing doubting. Olaf, with a signal of ' All 
hinds,' works his two capstans ; has the cable up high enough 
at the right moment, catches with it the keel of poor Hakon's 
barge, upsets it, empties it wholly into the sea. Wholly into 
the sea ; saves Hakon, how T ever, and his people from drown- 
ing, and brings them on board. His dialogue with poor 
young Hakon, especially poor young Hakon's responses, is 
very pretty. Shall I give it, out of Snorro, and let the reader 
take it for as authentic as he can ? It is at least the true 
image of it in authentic Snorro's head, little more than two 
centuries later : 

Jarl Hakon was led up to the King's ship. He w r as the 
handsomest man that could be seen. He had long hair, as 
fine as silk, bound about his head with a gold ornament. 
When he sat down in the forehold the King said to him : 

King. —It is not false, what is said of your family, that ye 
are handsome people to look at ; but now your luck has de- 
serted you. 

Hakon. — It has always been the case that success is change- 
able ; and there is no luck in the matter. It has gone with 
your family as with mine to have by turns the better lot, I 
am little beyond childhood in years ; and at any rate w 7 e could 
not have defended ourselves, as we did not expect any attack 
on the way. It may turn out better with us another time. 

King. — Dost thou not apprehend that thou art in such a 
condition that, hereafter, there can be neither victory nor de- 
feat for thee ? 



CO EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

Hakon,— -That is what only thou canst determine, King, ac- 
cording to thy pleasure. 

King. — What wilt thou give nae, Jarl, if, for this time, I let 
thee go, whole and unhurt ? 

Hakon.— What wilt thou take, King ? 

King. — Nothing, except that thou shalt leave the country; 
give up thy kingdom ; and take an oath that thou wilt never 
go into battle against me. 1 

Jarl Hakon accepted the generous terms ; went to England 
and King Knut, and kept his bargain for a good few years ; 
though he was at last driven, by pressure of King Knut, to 
violate it, — little to his profit, as we shall see. One victorious 
naval battle with Jarl Svein, Hakon's uncle, and his adher- 
ents, who fled to Sweden after his beating, — battle not diffi- 
cult to a skilful, hard-hitting king, — was pretty much all the 
actual fighting Olaf had to do in this enterprise. He vari- 
ous times met angry Bonders and refractory Things with 
arms in their hand ; but by skilful, firm management, — per- 
fectly patient, but also perfectly ready to be active, — he mostly 
managed without coming to strokes ; and was universally 
recognized by Norway as its real king. A promising young 
man, and fit to be a king, thinks Snorro. Only of middle 
stature, almost rather shortish ; but firm-standing, and stout- 
built ; so that they got to call him Olaf the Thick (meaning 
Olaf the Thick-.SY^, or Stout-built), though his final ejDithet 
among them was infinitely higher. For the rest, a ' comely, 
earnest, prepossessing look ; beautiful yellow hair in quantity, 
broad, honest face of a complexion pure as snow and rose ; ' 
and finally (or firstly) 'the brightest eyes in the world ; such 
that, in his anger, no man could stand them.' He had a heavy 
task ahead, and needed all his qualities and fine gifts to get 

it done. 

1 Snorro, vol. ii. pp. 24, 25. 



REIGN OF KINO OLAF THE SAINT. 61 



CHAPTEE X. 

REIGN OF KING OLAF THE SAINT. 

The late two Jarls, now gone about. their business, had 
both been baptized, and called themselves Christians. But 
during their government they did nothing in the conversion 
way ; left every man to choose his own God or Gods ; so 
that some had actually two, the Christian God by land, and 
at sea Thor, w T hom they considered safer in that element. 
And in effect the mass of the people had fallen back into a 
sluggish heathenism or half-heathenism, the life-labour of 
Olaf Tryggveson lying ruinous or almost quite overset. The 
new Olaf, son of Harald, set himself with all his strength to 
mend such a state of matters ; and stood by his enterprise to 
the end, as the one highest interest, including all others, for 
his People and him. His method was by no means soft ; on 
the contrary, it was hard, rapid, severe, — somewhat on the 
model of Tryggveson's, though with more of bishoping and 
preaching superadded. Yet still there was a great deal 
of mauling, vigorous punishing, and an entire intolerance of 
these two things : Heathenism and Sea-robbery, at least of 
Sea-robbery in the old style ; whether in the style w T e mod- 
erns still practice, and call privateering, I do not quite know. 
But Vildngism proper had to cease in Norway ; still more, 
Heathenism, under penalties too severe to be borne : death, 
mutilation of limb, not to mention forfeiture and less rigor- 
ous coercion. Olaf was inexorable against violation of the 
law. ' Too severe,' cried many ; to whom one answers, ' Per- 
haps in part yes, perhaps also in great part no ; depends al- 
together on the previous question, How far the law was the 
eternal one of God Almighty in the universe, how far the law 
merely of Olaf (destitute of right inspiration) left to his own 
passions and whims ? ■ 

Many were the jangles Olaf had with the refractory Heathen 
Things and Ironbeards of a new generation : very curious to 
see. Scarcely ever did it come to fighting between King 



62 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

and Thing, though often enough near it ; but the Thing dis- 
cerning, as it usually did in time, that the King was stronger 
in men, seemed to say unanimously to itself, "We have lost, 
then ; baptize us ; we must burn our old gods and conform." 
One new feature we do slightly discern : here and there a 
touch of theological argument on the heathen side. At one 
wild Thing, far up in the Dovrefjeld, of a very heathen 
temper, there was much of that ; not to be quenched by 
King Olaf at the moment ; so that it had to be adjourned till 
the morrow, and again till the next day. Here are some 
traits of it, much abridged from Snorro, who gives a highly 
punctual account, which vividly represents Olaf s posture and 
manner of proceeding in such intricacies. 

The chief Ironbeard on this occasion was one Gudbrand, a 
very rugged peasant ; who, says Snorro, was like a king in 
that district. Some days before, King Olaf, intending a re- 
ligious Thing in those deeply heathen parts, with alternative 
of Christianity or conflagration, is reported, on looking down 
into the valley and the beautiful village of Loar standing 
there, to have said wistfully, "What a pity it is that so 
beautiful a village should be burnt ! " Olaf sent out his 
message-token all the same, however, and met Gudbrand and 
an immense assemblage, whose humour towards him was un- 
compliant to a high degree indeed. Judge by this prelim- 
inary speech of Gudbrand to his Thing-people, while Olaf was 
not yet arrived, but only advancing, hardly got to Breeden 
on the other side of the hill : "A man has come to Loar who 
is called Olaf," said Gudbrand, "and will force upon us 
another faith than we had before, and will break in pieces all 
our Gods. He says he has a much greater and more power- 
ful God ; and it is wonderful that the earth does not burst 
asunder under him, or that our God lets him go about un- 
punished when he dares to talk such things. I know this for 
certain, that if we carry Thor, who has always stood by us, 
out of our Temple that is standing upon this farm, Olaf's 
God will melt away, and he and his men be made nothing as 
soon as Thor looks upon them." Whereupon the Bonders all 
shouted as one man, " Yea ! " 






REIGN OF KING OLAF THE SAINT. 03 

Which tremendous message they even forwarded to Olaf 
by Gudbrand's younger son at the head of 700 armed men ; 
but did not terrify Olaf with it, who, on the contrary, drew 
up his troops, rode himself at the head of them, and began a 
speech to the Bonders, in which he invited them to adopt 
Christianity as the one true faith for mortals. 

Far from consenting to this, the Bonders raised a general 
shout, smiting at the same time their shields with their 
weapons ; but Olaf's men advancing on them swiftly, and 
flinging spears, they turned and ran, leaving Gudbrand's son 
behind, a prisoner, to whom Olaf gave his life: "Go home 
now to thy father, and tell him I mean to be with him soon." 

The son goes accordingly, and advises his father not to face 
Olaf ; but Gudbrand angrily replies : " Ha, coward ! I see 
thou, too, art taken by the folly that man is going about 
with ;" and is resolved to fight. That night, however, Gud- 
brand has a most remarkable Dream, or Vision — A Man sur- 
rounded by light, bringing great terror with him, who warns 
Gudbrand against doing battle with Olaf. "If thou dost, 
thou and all thy people will fall ; wolves will drag away thee 
and thine, ravens will tear thee in stripes ! " And lo, in tell- 
ing this to Thord Potbelly, a sturdy neighbour of his, and 
henchman in the Thing, it is found that to Thord also has 
come the self-same terrible Apparition ! Better propose truce 
to Olaf (who seems to have these dreadful Ghostly Powers on 
his side), and the holding of a Thing, to discuss matters be- 
tween us. Thing assembles on a day of heavy rain. Being 
all seated, uprises King Olaf, and informs them: "The 
people of Lesso, Loar, and Vaage have accepted Christianity, 
and broken down their idol-houses : they believe now in the 
True God, who has made heaven and earth, and knows all 
things ; " and sits down again without more w T ords. 



Gudbrand replies, "We know nothing about him of whom 
thou speakest. Dost thou call him God, whom neither thou 
nor any one else can see ? But we have a God who can be 
seen every day, although he is not out to-day because the 
weather is wet, and he will appear to thee terrible and very 



61 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

grand ; and I expect that fear will mix with thy very blood 
when he comes into the Thing. But since thou sayest thy 
God is so great, let him make it so that to-morrow we have a 
cloudy day, but without rain, and then let us meet again." 

The King accordingly returned home to his lodging, taking 
Gudbrand's son as a hostage ; but he gave them a man as 
hostage in exchange. In the evening the King asked Gud- 
brand's son what their God was like ? He replied that he 
bore the likeness of Thor ; had a hammer in his hand ; was 
of great size, but hollow within ; and had a high stand, uj)on 
which he stood when he was out. "Neither gold nor sil- 
ver are wanting about him, and every day he receives four 
cakes of bread, besides meat." They then went to bed ; but 
the King watched all night in prayer. When day dawned the 
King went to mass ; then to table, and from thence to the 
Thing. The weather was such as Gudbrand desired. Now 
the Bishop stood up in his choir-robes, with bishop's coif on 
his head and bishop's crosier in his hand. He spoke to the 
Bonders of the true faith, told the many wonderful acts of 
God, and concluded his speech well. 

Thord Potbelly replies, " Many things we are told of by 
this learned man with the staff in his hand, crooked at the top 
like a ram's horn. But since you say, comrades, that your 
God is so powerful, and can do so many wonders, tell him to 
make it clear sunshine to-morrow forenoon, and then we shall 
meet here again, and do one of two things, — either agree with 
you about this business, or fight you." And they separated 
for the day. 

Overnight the king instructed Kolbein the Strong, an im- 
mense fellow, the same who killed Gunhild's two brothers, 
that he, Kolbein, must stand next him to-morrow ; people 
must go down to where the ships of the Bonders lay, and 
punctually bore holes in every one of them ; item, to the farms 
where their horses were, and punctually unhalter the whole of 
them, and let them loose : all which was done. Snorro con- 
tinues : 

Now the King was in prayer all night, beseeching God of 
his goodness and mercy to release him from evil. When mass 
was ended, and morning was grey, the king went to the Thing. 
When he came thither, some Bonders had already arrived, 



REIGN OF KING OLAF THE SAINT. 65 

and they saw a great crowd coming along, and bearing among 
them a huge man's image, glancing with gold and silver. 
When the Bonders who were at the Thing saw it, they started 
up, and bowed themselves down before the ugly idol. There- 
upon it was set down upon the Thing field ; and on the one 
side of it sat the Bonders, and on the other the King and his 
people. 

Then Dale Guclbrand stood up and said, " Where now, 
King, is thy God ? I think he will now carry his head lower ; 
and neither thou, nor the man with the horn, sitting beside thee 
there, whom thou callest Bishop, are so bold to-day as on the 
former days. For now our God, who rules over all, is come, 
and looks on you with an angry eye ; and now I see well 
enough that ye are terrified, and scarcely dare raise your eyes. 
Throw away now all your opposition, and believe in the God 
who has your fate wholly in his hands." 

The King now whispers to Kolbein the Strong, without the 
Bonders perceiving it, "If it come so in the course of my 
speech that the Bonders look another way than towards their 
idol, strike him as hard as thou canst with thy club." 

The King then stood up and spoke : " Much hast thou talked 
to us this morning, and greatly hast thou wondered that thou 
canst not see our God ; but we expect that he will soon come 
to us. Thou wouldst frighten us with thy God, who is both 
blind and deaf, and cannot even move about without being car- 
ried ; but now I expect it will be a short time before he meets 
his fate : for turn your eyes towards the east, — behold our 
God advancing in great light." 

The sun was rising, and all turned to look. At that moment 
Kolbein gave their God a stroke, so that he quite burst asun- 
der ; and there ran out of him mice as big almost as cats, and 
reptiles and adders. The Bonders were so terrified that some 
fled to their ships ; but when they sprang out upon them the 
ships filled with water, and could not get away. Others ran 
to their horses, but could not find them. The King then or- 
dered the Bonders to be called together, saying he wanted to 
speak with them, on which the Bonders came back, and the 
Thing was again seated. 

The King rose up and said, "I do not understand what 
your noise and running mean. You yourselves see what your 
God can do, — the idol you adorned with gold and silver, and 
brought meat and provisions to. You see now that the pro- 
tecting powers, who used and got good of all that, were the 
mice and adders, the reptiles and lizards ; and surely they do 



6G EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

ill who trust to such, and will not abandon this folly. Take 
now your gold and ornaments that are lying strewed on the 
grass, and give them to your wives and daughters, but never 
hang them hereafter upon stocks and stones. Here are two 
conditions between us to choose upon : either accept Chris- 
tianity, or fight this very day, and the victory be to them to 
whom the God we worship gives it." 

Then Dale Gudbrand stood up and said, "We have sus- 
tained great damage upon our God ; but since he will not 
help us, we will believe in the God whom thou believest in." 

Then all received Christianity. The Bishop baptized Gud- 
brand and his son. King Olaf and Bishop Sigurd left behind 
them teachers ; and they who met as enemies parted as friends. 
And afterwards Gudbrand built a church in the valley. 1 

Olaf was by no means an unmerciful man, — much the re- 
verse where he saw good cause. There was a wicked old King 
Eaerik, for example, one of those five kinglets whom, with 
their bits of armaments, Olaf by stratagem had surrounded one 
night, and at once bagged and subjected when morning rose, 
all of them consenting ; all of them except this Eaerik, whom 
Olaf, as the readiest sure course, took home with him ; blinded, 
and kept in his own house ; finding there was no alternative 
but that or death to the obstinate old dog, who was a kind of 
distant cousin withal, and could not conscientiously be killed. 
Stone-blind old Eaerik was not always in murderous humour. 
Indeed, for most part he wore a placid, conciliatory aspect, 
and said shrewd, amusing things ; but had thrice over tried, 
with amazing cunning of contrivance, though stone-blind, to 
thrust a dagger into Olaf, and the last time had all but suc- 
ceeded. So that, as Olaf still refused to have him killed, it 
had become a problem what was to be done with him. Olafs 
good-humour, as well as his quiet, ready sense and practical- 
ity, are manifested in his final settlement of this Kaerik prob- 
lem. Olafs laugh, I can perceive, was not so loud as Tryggve- 
son's, but equally hearty, coming from the bright mind of 
him ! 

Besides blind Eaerik, Olaf had in his household one Thor- 
arin, an Icelander : a remarkably ugly man, says Snorro, but 
1 Snorro, vol. ii. pp. 156-161. 



REIGN OF KING OLAF THE SAINT. 67 

a far-travelled, shrewdly observant, loyal-minded, and good- 
humoured person, whom Olaf liked to talk with. ' Remark- 
ably ugly,' says Snorro, 'especially in his hands and feet, which 
were large and ill-shaped to a degree.' One morning Thor- 
arin, who, with other trusted ones, slept in Olaf's apartment, 
was lazily dozing and yawning, and had stretched one of his 
feet out of the bed before the king awoke. The foot was still 
there when Olaf did open his bright eyes, which instantly 
lighted on the foot. 

"Well, here is a foot," says Olaf, gayly, " which one seldom 
sees the match of; I durst venture there is not another so 
ugly in this city of Nidaros." 

" Ha, King ! " said Thorarin, " there are few things one 
cannot match if one seek long and take pains. I would bet, 
with thy permission, King, to find an uglier." 

"Done!" cried Olaf. Upon which Thorarin stretched out 
the other foot. 

"A still uglier," cried he ; "for it has lost the little toe." 

" Ho, ho ! " said Olaf ; " but it is I who have gained the 
" bet. The less of an ugly thing the less ugly, not the more ! " 

Loyal Thorarin respectfully submitted. 

" What is to be my penalty, then ? The King it is that 
must decide." 

"To take me that wicked old Raerik to Leif Ericson in 
Greenland." 

Which the Icelander did ; leaving two vacant seats hence- 
forth at Olafs table. Leif Ericson, son of Eric, discoverer of 
America, quietly managed Raerik henceforth ; sent him to 
Iceland, — I think to father Eric himself ; certainly to some 
safe hand there, in whose house, or in some still quieter neigh- 
bouring lodging, at his own choice, old Raerik spent the last 
three years of his life in a perfectly quiescent manner. 

Olaf's struggles in the matter of religion had actually set- 
tled that question in Norway. By these rough methods of 
his, whatever we may think of them, Heathenism had got it- 
self smashed dead ; and was no more heard of in that coun- 
try. Olaf himself was evidently a highly devout and pious 
man ;— whosoever is born with Olaf's temper now will still 



GS EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

find, as Olaf did, new and infinite field for it ! Christianity 
in Norway had the like fertility -as in other countries ; or even 
rose to a higher and, what Dahlmann thinks, exuberant pitch 
in the course of the two centuries which followed that of 
Olaf. Him all testimony represents to us as a most righteous 
no less than most religious king. Continually vigilant, just, 
and rigorous was Olaf's administration of the laws ; repres- 
sion of robbery, punishment of injustice, stern repayment of 
evil-doers, wherever he could lay hold of them. 

Among the Bonder or opulent class, and indeed everywhere, 
for the poor too can be sinners and need punishment, Olaf 
had, by this course of conduct, naturally made enemies. His 
seventy so visible to all, and the justice and infinite benefi- 
cence of it so invisible except to a very few. But, at any 
rate, the first ten years of his life were victorious to the end, 
had it not been intersected and interfered with by King Knut 
in his far bigger orbit and current of affairs and interests. 
Knut's English affairs and Danish being all settled to his 
mind, he seems, especially after that year of pilgrimage to 
Rome, and association with the Pontiffs and Kaisers of the 
world on that occasion, to have turned his more particular 
attention upon Norway, and the claims he himself had there. 
Jarl Hakon, too, sister's son of Knut, and always well seen by 
him, had long been busy in this direction, much forgetful of 
that oath to Olaf when his barge got canted over by the cable 
of two capstans, and his life was given him, not without con- 
ditions altogether ! 

About the year 1026 there arrived two spendid persons out 
of England, bearing King Knut the Great's letter and seal, 
with a message, likely enough to be far from welcome to 
Olaf. For some days Olaf refused to see them or their letter, 
shrewdly guessing what the purport would be. Which in- 
deed was couched in mild language, but of sharp meaning 
enough : a notice to King Olaf, namely, That Norway was 
properly, by just heritage, Knut the Great's ; and that Olaf 
must become the great Knut's liegeman, and pay tribute to 
him, or worse would follow. King Olaf, listening to these 
two splendid persons and their letter, in indignant silence 



3 



REIGN OF KING OLAF THE SAINT. B9 

till they quite ended, made answer : " I have heard say, by 
old accounts there are, that King Gorm of Denmark " (Blue- 
tooth's father, Knut's great-grandfather) " was considered but 
a small king ; having Denmark only and few people to rule 
over. But the kings who succeeded him thought that in- 
sufficient for them ; and it has since come so far that King 
Knut rules over both Denmark and England, and has con- 
quered for himself a part of Scotland. And now he claims 
also my paternal bit of heritage ; cannot be contented with- 
out that too. Does he wish to rule over all the countries of 
the North ? Can he eat up all the kale in England itself, this 
Knut the Great? He shall do that, and reduce his England 
to a desert, before I lay my head in his hands, or show him 
any other kind of vassalage. And so I bid you tell him these 
my words : I will defend Norway with battle-axe and sword as 
long as life is given me, and will pay tax to no man for my 
kingdom." Words which naturally irritated Knut to a high 
degree. 

Next year accordingly (year 1027), tenth or eleventh year 
of Olafs reign, there came bad rumours out of England : 
That Knut was equipping an immense army, — land-army, and 
such a fleet as had never sailed before ; Knut's own ship in 
it, — a Gold Dragon with no fewer than sixty benches of oars. 
Olaf and the King of Sweden, whose sister he had married, 
well guessed whither this armament was bound. They were 
friends withal ; they recognized their common peril in this 
imminence ; and had, in repeated consultations, taken meas- 
ures the best that their united skill (which I find was mainly 
Olafs, but loyally accepted by the other) could suggest. It 
was in this year that Olaf (with his Swedish king assisting) 
did his grand feat upon Knut in Lymfjord of Jutland, which 
was already spoken of. The special circumstances of which 
were these : 

Knut's big armament arriving on the Jutish coasts too late 
in the season, and the coast country lying all plundered into 
temporary wreck by the two Norse kings, who shrank away 
on sight of Knut, there was nothing could be done upon them 
by Knut this year, — or, if anything, what ? Knut's ships ran 



70 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

intoLymfjord, the safe-sheltered frith, or intricate long strag- 
gle of friths and straits, which almost cuts Jutland in two in 
that region ; and lay s*afe, idly rocking on the waters there, 
uncertain what to do farther. At last he steered in his big 
ship and some others deeper into the interior of Lymfjord, 
deeper and deeper onwards to the mouth of a big river called 
the Helge (Helge-aa, the Holy River, not discoverable in my 
poor maps, but certainly enough still existing and still flow- 
ing somewhere among those intricate straits and friths), to- 
wards the bottom of which Helge river lay, in some safe 
nook, the small combined Swedish and Norse fleet, under 
charge of Onund, the Swedish king, while at the top or 
source, which is a biggish mountain lake, King Olaf had been 
doing considerable engineering works, well suited to such an 
occasion, and was now ready at a moment's notice. Knut's 
fleet having idly taken station here, notice from the Swedish 
king was instantly sent ; instantly Olaf's well-engineered flood- 
gates were thrown open ; from the swollen lake a huge deluge 
of water was let loose ; Olaf himself with all his people hast- 
ening down to join his Swedish friend and get on board in 
time ; Helge river all the while alongside of him, with ever- 
increasing roar and wider-spreading deluge, hastening down 
the steeps in the night watches. So that along with Olaf, or 
some way ahead of him, came immeasurable roaring waste of 
waters upon Knut's negligent fleet ; shattered, broke, and 
stranded many of his ships, and was within a trifle of destroy- 
ing the Golden Dragon herself, with Knut on board. Olaf 
and Onund, we need not say, were promptly there in person, 
doing their very best ; the railings of the Golden Dragon 
however were too high for their little ships, and Jarl Ulf, 
husband of Knut's sister, at the top of his speed, courage- 
ously intervening, spoiled their stratagem, and saved Knut. 
from this very dangerous pass. 

Knut did nothing more this winter. The two Norse kings, 
quite unequal to attack such an armament, except by ambush 
and engineering, sailed away ; again plundering at discretion 
on the Danish coast ; carrying into Sweden great booties and 
many prisoners ; but obliged to lie there fixed all winter ; 



i 



REIGN OP KING OLAF THE SAINT. 71 

and indeed to leave their fleets there for a series of winters, 
— Knut's fleet, posted at Elsinore on both sides of the Sound, 
rendering all egress from the Baltic impossible, except at his 
pleasure. Ulfs opportune deliverance of his royal brother- 
in-law did not much bestead poor Ulf himself. He had been 
in disfavour before, pardoned with difficulty by Queen Emma's 
intercession ; an ambitious, officious, pushing, stirring, and, 
both in England and Denmark, almost dangerous man ; and 
this conspicuous accidental merit only awoke new jealousy in 
Knut. Knut, finding nothing pass the Sound worth much 
blockading, went ashore ; ' and the day before Michaelmas,' 
says Snorro, ' rode with a great retinue to Roeskilde.' Snorro 
continues his tragic narrative of what befell there : 

There Knut's brother-in-law, Jarl Ulf, had prepared a great 
feast for him. The Jarl was the most agreeable of hosts ; but 
the King was silent and sullen. The Jarl talked to him in 
every way to make him cheerful, and brought forward every- 
thing he could think of to amuse him ; but the King remained 
stern, and speaking little. At last the Jarl proposed a game 
of chess, which he agreed to. A chess-board was produced, 
and they played together. Jarl Ulf was hasty in temper, 
stiff, and in nothing yielding ; but everything he managed 
went on well in his hands ; and he was a great warrior, about 
whom there are many stories. He was the most powerful 
man in Denmark next to the King. Jarl Ulfs sister, Gycla, 
was married to Jarl Gudin (Godwin) Ulfradsson ; and their 
sons were, Harald, King of England, and Jarl Tosti, Jarl 
Walthiof, Jarl Mauro-Kaare, and Jarl Svein. Gycla was the 
name of their daughter, who was married to the English King 
Edward the Good (whom we call the Confessor). 

When they had played a while, the King made a false move ; 
on which the Jarl took a knight from him ; but the King set 
the piece on the board again, and told the Jarl to make an- 
other move. But the Jarl flew angry, tumbled the chess- 
board over, rose, and went away. The King said, " Run thy 
ways, Ulf the Fearful." The Jarl turned round at the door 
and said, " Thou wouldst have run farther at Helge river 
hadst thou been left to battle there. Thou didst not call me 
Ulf the Fearful when I hastened to thy help while the Swedes 
were beating thee like a dog." The Jarl then went out and 
went to bed. 



72 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

The following morning, while the King was putting on his 
clothes, he said to his footboy, " Go thou to Jarl Ulf and kill 
him." The lad went, was away a while, and then came back. 
The King said, " Hast thou killed the Jarl ? " " I did not kill 
him, for he was gone to St. Lucius's church." There was a 
man called Ivar the White, a Norwegian by birth, who was 
the King's courtman and chamberlain. The King said to him, 
" Go thou and kill the Jarl." Ivar went to the church, and in 
at the choir, and thrust his sword through the Jarl, who died 
on the spot. Then Ivar went to the King, with the bloody* 
sword in his hand. 

The King said, " Hast thou killed the Jarl ? " "I have killed 
him," said he. "Thou hast done well," answered the King. 1 

From a man who built so many churches (one on each bat- 
tle-field where he had fought, to say nothing of the others), 
and who had in him such depths of real devotion and other 
fine cosmic quality, this does seem rather strong ! But it is 
characteristic, withal,— of the man, and perhaps of the times 
still more. In any case, it is an event worth noting, the slain 
Jarl Ulf and his connections being of importance in the history 
of Denmark and of England also. Ulf s wife was Astrid, sister 
of Knut, and their only child was Svein, styled afterwards 
' Svein Estrithson ' (' Ast?~id-son ') when he became noted in 
the world, — at this time a beardless youth, who, on the back 
of this tragedy, fled hastily to Sweden, where were friends of 
Ulf. After some ten years' eclipse there, Knut and both his 
sons being now dead, Svein reappeared in Denmark under a 
new and eminent figure, 'Jarl of Denmark,' highest Liege- 
man to the then sovereign there. Broke his oath to said sov- 
ereign, declared himself, Svein Estrithson, to be real King of 
Denmark ; and, after much preliminary trouble, and many beat- 
ings and disastrous flights to and fro, became in effect such, — 
to the wonder of mankind ; for he had not had one victory to 
cheer him on, or any good luck or merit that one sees, except 
that of surviving longer than some others. Nevertheless he 
came to be the Kestorer. so called, of Danish independence ; 
sole remaining representative of Knut (or Knut's sister), of 
Fork-beard, Blue-tooth, and Old Gorm ; and ancestor of all 
1 Snorro, vol. ii. pp. 252-3. 



REIGN OF KING OLAF THE SAINT. 73 

the subsequent kings of Denmark for some 400 years ; himself 
coming, as we see, only by the Distaff side, all of the Sword 
or male side having died so soon. Early death, it has been 
observed, was the Great Knut's allotment, and all his pos- 
terity's as well ; — fatal limit (had there been no others, which 
we see there were) to his becoming ' Charlemagne of the 
North ' in any considerable degree ! Jarl Ulf, as we have 
seen, had a sister, Gyda by name, wife to Earl Godwin 
( ' Gudin Ulfradsson,' as Snorro calls him), a very memorable 
Englishman, whose son and hers, King Harald, Harold in 
English books, is the memorablest of all. These things 
ought to be better known to English antiquaries, and will 
perhaps be alluded to again. 

This pretty little victory or affront, gained over Knut in 
Lymfjord, was among the last successes of Olaf against that 
. mighty man. Olaf, the skilful captain he was, need not have 
despaired to defend his Norway against Knut and all the 
world. But he learned henceforth, month by month ever 
more tragically, that his own people, seeing softer prospects 
under Knut ; and in particular that the chiefs of them, indus- 
triously bribed by Knut for years past, had fallen away from 
him ; and that his means of defence were gone. Next sum- 
mer, Knut's grand fleet sailed, unopposed, along the coasts of 
Norway ; Knut summoning a Thing every here and there, and 
in all of them meeting nothing but sky-high acclamation and 
acceptance. Olaf, with some twelve little ships, all he now 
had, lay quiet in some safe fjord, near Lindenaes, what we 
now call the Naze, behind some little solitary isles on the 
south-east of Norway there, till triumphant Knut had streamed 
home again. Home to England again : ' Sovereign of Nor- 
way ' now, with nephew Hakon appointed Jarl and Vice-regent 
under him ! This was the news Olaf met on venturing out ; 
and that his worst anticipations were not beyond the sad 
truth. All, or almost all, the chief Bonders and men of 
weight in Norway had declared against him, and stood with 
triumphant Knut. 

Olaf, with his twelve poor ships, steered vigorously along 
the coast to collect money and force, — if such could now any- 



EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 



where be had. He himself was resolute to hold out, and try. 
1 Sailing swiftly with a fair wind, morning cloudy with some 
showers, he passed the coast of Jedderen, which was Erling 
Skjalgson's country, when he got sure notice of an endless 
multitude of ships, war-ships, armed merchant ships, all kinds 
of shipping-craft, down to fisherman's boats, just getting 
under way against him, under the command of Erling Skjalg- 
son, — the powerfullest of his subjects, once much a friend of 
Olaf s, but now gone against him to this length, thanks to 
Olaf's severity of justice, and Knut's abundance in gold and 
promises for years back. To that complexion had it come 
with Erling ; sailing with this immense assemblage of the 
naval people and populace of Norway to seize King Olaf, and. 
bring him to the great Knut dead or alive. 

Erling had a grand new ship of his own, which far out- 
sailed the general miscellany of rebel ships, and was visibly 
fast gaining distance on Olaf himself, — who well understood 
what Erling's puzzle was, between the tail of his game (the 
miscellany of rebel ships, namely) that could not come, up, 
and the head or general prize of the game which was crowding 
all sail to get away ; and Olaf took advantage of the same. 
" Lower your sails ! " said Olaf to his men (though we must 
go slower). "Ho you, we have lost sight of them ! " said Er- 
ling to his, and put on all his speed ; Olaf going, soon after 
this, altogether invisible, — behind a little island that he knew 
of, whence into a certain fjord or bay (Bay of Fungen on the 
maps), which he thought would suit him. "Halt here, and 
get out your arms," said Olaf, and had not to wait long till 
Erling came bounding in, past the rocky promontory, and 
with astonishment beheld Olaf's fleet of twelve with their 
battle-axes and their grappling-irons all in perfect readiness. 
These fell on him, the unready Erling, simultaneous, like a 
cluster of angry bees ; and in a few minutes cleared his ship 
of men altogether, except Erling himself. Nobody asked his 
life, nor probably would have got it if he had. Only Erling 
still stood erect on a high place on the poop, fiercely defen- 
sive, and very difficult to get at. ' Could not be reached at 
all,' says Snorro, ' except by spears or arrows, and these he 



BEIGN OF KING OLAF THE SAINT. 75 

warded off with untiring dexterity ; no man in Norway, it was 
said, had ever defended himself so long alone against many/ 
— an almost invincible Erling, had his cause been good. Olaf 
himself noticed Erling's behaviour, and said to him, from the 
foredeck below, " Thou hast turned against me to-day, Er- 
ling." " The eagles fight breast to breast," answers he. This 
was a speech of the King's to Erling once long ago, while 
they stood fighting, not as now, but side by side. The King, 
with some transient thought of possibility going through his 
head, rejoins, "Wilt thou surrender, Erling?" "That will 
I," answered he ; took the helmet off his head ; laid down 
sword and shield ; and went forward to the forecastle-deck. 
The King pricked, I think not very harshly, into Erling's 
chin or beard with the point of his battle-axe, saying, "I 
must mark thee as traitor to thy sovereign, though." Where- 
upon one of the bystanders, Aslak Fitiaskalle, stupidly and 
fiercely burst up ; smote Erling on the head with his axe ; so 
that it stuck fast in his brain, and was instantly the death of 
Erling. "Ill-luck attend thee for that stroke ; thou hast 
struck Norway out of my hand by it ! " cried the King to 
Aslak ; but forgave the poor fellow, who had done it meaning 
well. The insurrectionary Bonder fleet arriving soon after, 
as if for certain victory, was struck with astonishment at this 
Erling catastrophe ; and, being now without any leader of 
authority, made not the least attempt at battle ; but, full of 
discouragement and consternation, thankfully allowed Olaf to 
sail away on his northward voyage at discretion ; and them- 
selves went off lamenting, with Erling's dead body. 

This small victory was the last that Olaf had over his many 
enemies at present. He sailed along, still northward, day 
after day ; several important people joined him ; but the news 
from landward grew daily more ominous : Bonders busily 
arming to rear of him ; and ahead, Hakon still more busily 
at Trondhjem, now near by, " — and he will end thy days, 
King, if he have strength enough ! " Olaf paused ; sent 
scouts to a hill- top : " Hakon 's armament visible enough, and 
under way hitherward, about the Isle of Bjarno, yonder ! " 
Soon after, Olaf himself saw the Bonder armament of twenty- 



76 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

five ships, from the southward, sail past in the distance to 
join that of Hakon ; and, worse still, his own ships, one and 
another (seven in all), were slipping off on a like errand ! He 
made for the Fjord of Fodrar, mouth of the rugged strath 
called Valdai, — which I think still knows Olaf, and has now 
an ' Olaf s Highway,' where, nine centuries ago, it scarcely 
had a path. Olaf entered this fjord, had his land-tent set up, 
and a cross beside it, on the small level green behind the 
promontory there. Finding that his twelve poor ships were 
now reduced to five, against a world all risen upon him, he 
could not but see and admit to himself that there was no 
chance left ; and that he must withdraw across the mountains 
and wait for a better time. 

His journey through that w T ild country, in these forlorn 
and straitened circumstances, has a mournful dignity and 
homely pathos, as described by Snorro : how he drew up his 
five poor ships upon the beach, packed all their furniture 
away, and with his hundred or so of attendants and their 
journey-baggage, under guidance of some friendly Bonder, 
rode up into the desert and foot of the mountains ; scaled, 
after three days' effort (as if by miracle, thought his attend- 
ants and thought Snorro), the well-nigh precipitous slope 
that led across, — never without miraculous aid from Heaven 
and Olaf could baggage-wagons have ascended that path ! 
In short, How he fared along, beset by difficulties and the 
mournfullest thoughts ; but patiently persisted, steadfastly 
trusted in God ; and was fixed to return, and by God's help 
try again. An evidently very pious and devout man ; a good 
man struggling with adversity, such as the gods, we may still 
imagine with the ancients, do look down upon as their noblest 
sight. 

He got to Sweden, to the court of his brother-in law ; kind- 
ly and nobly enough received there, though gradually, per- 
haps, ill-seen by the now authorities of Norway. So that be- 
fore long he quitted Sweden ; left his queen there with her 
only daughter, his and hers, the only child they had ; he him- 
self had an only son, 'by a bond- woman,' Magnus by name, 
who came to great things afterwards ; of whom, and of which. 



REIGN OF KING OLAF THE SAINT. 77 

by and by. With this bright little boy, and a selected escort 
of attendants, he moved away to Russia, to King Jarroslav ; 
where he might wait secure against all risk of hurting kind 
friends by his presence. He seems to have been an exile al- 
together some two years, — such is one's vague notion ; for 
there is no chronology in Snorro or his Sagas, and one is re- 
duced to guessing and inferring. He had reigned over Nor- 
way, reckoning from the first days of his landing there to those 
last of his leaving it across the Dovrefjeld, about fifteen years, 
ten of them shiningly victorious. 

The news from Norway were naturally agitating to King 
Olaf ; and, in the fluctuation of events there, his purposes and 
prospects varied much. He sometimes thought of pilgriming v 
to Jerusalem, and a henceforth exclusively religious life ; but 
for most part his pious thoughts themselves gravitated towards 
Norway, and a stroke for his old place and task there, which 
he steadily considered to have been committed to him by God. 
Norway, by the rumours, was evidently not at rest. Jarl Ha- 
kon, under the high patronage of his uncle, had lasted there 
but a little while. I know not that his government was es- 
pecially unpopular, nor whether he himself much remembered 
his broken oath. It appears, however, he had left in England 
a beautiful bride ; and considering farther that in England 
only could bridal ornaments and other wedding outfit of a 
sufficiently royal kind be found, he set sail thither, to fetch 
her and them himself. One evening of wildish-looking weather 
he was seen about the north-east corner of the Pentland Frith ; 
the night rose to be tempestuous ; Hakon or any timber of his 
fleet was never seen more. Had all gone down, — broken 
oaths, bridal hopes, and all else ; mouse and man, — into the 
roaring waters ? There was no farther Opposition -line ; the 
like of which had lasted ever since old heathen Hakon Jarl, 
down to this his grandson Hakon's^ms in the Pentland Frith. 
With this Hakon's disappearace it now disappeared. 

Indeed Knut himself, though of an empire suddenly so 
great, was but a temporary phenomenon. Fate had decided 
that the great and wise Knut was to be short lived ; and to 
leave nothing as successors but an insignificant young Harald 



78 EABLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

Harefoot, who soon perished and a still stupider fiercely-drink- 
ing Harda-Knut, who rushed down of apoplexy (here in Lon- 
don City, as I gather), with the goblet at his mouth, drinking 
health and happiness at a wedding-feast, also before long. 

Hakon having vanished in "this dark way, there ensued a 
pause, both on Knut's part and on Norway's. Pause or inter- 
regnum of some months, till it became certain, first, whether 
Hakon were actually dead, secondly, till Norway, and espe- 
cially till King Knut himself, could decide what to do. Knut, 
to the deep disappointment, which had to keep itself silent, of 
three or four chief Norway men, named none of these three 
or four Jarl of Norway ; but bethought him of a certain Svein, 
a bastard son of his own,— who, and almost still more his Eng- 
lish mother, much desired a career in the world fitter for him, 
thought they indignantly, than that of captain over Jomsburg, 
where alone the father had been able to provide for him hither- 
to. Svein was sent to Norway as king or vice-king for Father 
Knut ; and along with him his fond and vehement mother. 
Neither of whom gained any favour from the Norse people by 
the kind of management they ultimately came to show. 

Olaf on news of this change, and such uncertainty prevail- 
ing everywhere in Norway as to the future course of things, — 
whether Svein would come, as was rumoured of at last, and be 
able to maintain himself if he did, — thought there might be 
something in it of a chance for himself and his rights. And, 
after lengthened hesitation, much prayer, pious invocation 
and consideration, decided to go and try it. The final grain 
that had turned the balance, it appears, was a half-waking 
morning dream, or almost ocular vision he had of his glorious 
cousin Olaf Tryggveson, who severely admonished, exhorted 
and encouraged him ; and disappeared grandly, just in the 
instant of Olaf's awakening ; so that Olaf almost fancied he 
had seen the very figure of him as it melted into air. " Let 
us on, let us on ! " thought Olaf always after that. He left his 
son, not in Russia, but in Sweden with the Queen, who proved 
very good and carefully helpful in wise ways to him : — in 
Russia Olaf had now nothing more to do but give his grateful 
adieus, and get ready. 



. BEIGN OF KING OLAF THE SAINT. 79 

His march towards Sweden, and from that towards Norway 
and the passes of the mountains, down Vaerdal, towards 
Stickelstad, and the crisis that awaited, is beautifully depicted 
by Snorro. It has, all of it, the description (and we see clearly 
the fact itself had), a kind of pathetic grandeur, simplicity, 
and rude nobleness ; something Epic or Homeric, without 
the metre or the singing of Homer, but with all the sincerity, 
rugged truth to nature, and much more of piety, devoutness, 
reverence for what is for ever High in this Universe, than 
meets us in those old Greek Ballad-mongers. Singularly vis- 
ual all of it, too, brought home in every particular to one's 
imagination, so that it stands out almost as a thing one actu- 
ually saw. 

Olaf had about three thousand men with him ; gathered 
mostly as he fared along through Norway. Four hundred, 
raised by one Dag, a kinsman whom he had found in Sweden 
and persuaded to come with him, marched usually in a sepa- 
rate body ; and were, or might have been, rather an important 
element. Learning that the Bonders were all arming, espe- 
cially in Trondhjem country, Olaf streamed down towards them 
in the closest order he could. By no means very close, sub- 
sistence even for three thousand being difficult in such a coun- 
try. His speech was almost always free and cheerful, though 
his thoughts ahvays naturally were of a high and earnest, al- 
most sacred tone ; devout above all. Stickelstad, a small poor 
hamlet still standing where the valley ends, was seen by Olaf, 
and tacitly by the Bonders as well, to be the natural place for 
offering battle. There Olaf issued out from the hills one 
morning ; drew himself up according to the best rules of 
Norse tactics, — rules of little complexity, but perspicuously 
true to the facts. I think he had a clear open ground still 
rather raised above the plain in front ; he could see how the 
Bonder army had not yet quite arrived, but was pouring for- 
ward, in spontaneous rows or groups, copiously by every path. 
This was thought to be the biggest army that ever met in Nor- 
way ; ' certainly not much fewer than a hundred times a hun- 
dred men, according to Snorro ; great Bonders several of them, 
small Bonders very many, — all of willing mind, animated with 



80 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

a hot sense of intolerable injuries. ' King Olaf had punished 
great and small with equal rigour/ says Snorro ; ' which ap- 
peared to the chief people of the country too severe ; and ani- 
mosity rose to the highest when they lost relatives by the 
King's just sentence, although they were in reality guilty. He 
again would rather renounce his dignity than omit righteous 
judgment. The accusation against him of being stingy with 
his money was not just, for he was a most generous man to- 
wards his friends. But that alone was the cause of the discon- 
tent raised against him that he appeared hard and severe in 
his retributions. Besides, King Knut offered large sums of 
money, and the great chiefs were corrupted by this, and by 
his offering them greater dignities than they had possessed 
before.' On these grounds, against the intolerable man, great 
and small were now pouring along by every path. 

Olaf perceived it would still be some time before the Bonder 
army was in rank, His own Dag of Sweden, too, was not yet 
come up ; he was to have the right banner ; King Olaf s own 
being the middle or grand one ; some other person the third 
or left banner. All which being perfectly ranked and settled, 
according to the best rules, and waiting only the arrival of 
Dag, Olaf bade his men sit down, and freshen themselves with 
a little rest. There were religious services gone through : a 
matins- worship such as there have been few; sternly earnest 
to the heart of it, and deep as death and eternity, at least on 
Olaf s own part. For the rest Thormod sang a stave of the 
fiercest Skaldic poetry that was in hi in ; all the army straight- 
way sang it in chorus with fiery mind. The Bonder of the 
nearest farm came up to tell Olaf that he also wished to fight 
for him. "Thanks to thee; but don't," said Olaf; " stay at 
home rather, that the wounded may have some shelter." To 
this Bonder Olaf delivered ail the money he had, with solemn 
order to lay out the whole of it in masses and prayers for the 
souls of such of his enemies as fell. "Such of thy enemies, 
King?" "Yes, surely," said Olaf ; "my friends will all either 
conquer, or go whither I also am going." 

At last the Bonder army, too, was got ranked ; three com- 
manders, one of them with a kind of loose chief command, 



REIGN OF KING OLAF THE SAINT. 81 

having settled to take charge of it ; and began to shake itself 
towards actual advance. Olaf in the meanwhile had laid his 
head on the knees of Finn Arneson, his trustiest man, and 
fallen fast asleep. Finn's brother, Kalf Arneson, once a warm 
friend of Olaf, was chief of the three commanders on the op- 
posite side. Finn and he addressed angry speech to one an- 
other from the opposite ranks when they came near enough. 
Finn 1 , seeing the enemy fairly approach, stirred Olaf from his 
sleep. " Oh, why hast thou awakened me from such a dream ? " 
said Olaf, in a deeply solemn tone. " What dream was it, 
then?" asked Finn. "I dreamt that there rose a ladder here 
reaching up to very Heaven," said Olaf ; "I had climbed and 
climbed, and got to the very last step, and should have en- 
tered there hadst thou given me another moment." "King, 
I doubt thou art fey ; I do not quite like that dream." 

The actual fight began about one of the clock in a most 
bright last day of July, and was very fierce and hot, especially 
on the part of Olaf 's men, who shook the others back a little, 
though fierce enough they too ; and had Dag been on the 
ground, which he wasn't yet, it was thought victory might 
have been won. Soon after battle joined the sky grew of 
a ghastly brass or copper colour, darker and darker, till thick 
night involved all things ; and did not clear away again till 
battle was near ending. Dag, with his four hundred, arrived 
in the darkness, and made a furious charge, what was after- 
wards, in the speech of the people, called 'Dag's storm.' 
Which had nearly prevailed, but could not quite ; victory 
again inclining to the so vastly larger party. It is uncertain 
still how the matter would have gone ; for Olaf himself was 
now fighting with his own hand, and doing deadly execution 
on his busiest enemies to right and to left. But one of these 
chief rebels, Thorer Hund (thought to have learnt magic from 
the Laplanders, whom he long traded with, and made money 
by), mysteriously would not fall for Olaf s best strokes. Best 
strokes brought only dust from the (enchanted) deer-skin coat 
of the fellow, to Olafs surprise, — when another of the rebel 
chiefs rushed forward, struck Olaf with his battle-axe a wild 
slashing wound, and miserably broke his thigh, so that he 



82 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

staggered or was supported back to the nearest stone ; and 
there sat down, lamentably calling on God to help him in this 
bad hour. Another rebel of note (the name of him long mem- 
orable in Norway) slashed or stabbed Olaf a second time, as 
did then a third. Upon which the noble Olaf sank dead, and 
forever quitted this doghole of a world, — little worthy of such 
men as Olaf, one sometimes thinks. But that, too, is a mis- 
take, and even an important one, should we persist in it. 

"With Olafs death the sky cleared again. Battle, now near 
done, ended with complete victory to the rebels, and next to 
no pursuit or result, except the death to Olaf ; everybody 
hastening home as soon as the big Duel had decided itself. 
Olafs body was secretly carried, after dark, to some out- 
house on the farm near the spot ; whither a poor blind beg- 
gar creeping in for rhelter that very evening was miraculously 
restored to sight. And, truly with a notable, almost miracu- 
lous speed, the feelings of all Norway for King Olaf changed 
themselves, and were turned upside down, ' within a year,' 
or almost within a day. Superlative example of Extinctus 
amabitur idem. Not 'Olaf the Thick-set' any longer, but 
1 Olaf the Blessed' or Saint, now clearly in Heaven ; such the 
name and character of him from that time to this. Two 
churches dedicated to him (out of four that once stood) stand 
in London at this moment. And the miracles that have been 
done there, not to speak of Norway and Christendom elsewhere, 
in his name, were numerous and great for long centuries after- 
wards. Visibly a Saint Olat* ever since ; and, indeed, in 
Bollandus or elsewhere, I have seldom met with better stuff 
to make a Saint of, or a true World-Hero in all good senses. 
Speaking of the London Olaf Churches, I should have added 
that from one of these the thrice-famous Tooley Street gets 
its name, — where those Three Tailors, addressing Parliament 
and the Universe, sublimely styled themselves, ' We, the Peo- 
ple of England.' Saint Olave Street, St. Oley Street, Stoo- 
ley Street, Tooley Street : such are the metamorphoses of 
human fame in the world ! 

The battle-day of Stickelstad, King Olafs death-day, is 
generally believed to have been Wednesday, July 31, 1033. 






MAGNUS THE GOOD AND OTHERS. 83 

But on investigation, it turns out that there was no total 
eclipse of the sun visible in Norway that year ; though three 
years before there was one ; but on the 29th instead of the 
31st. . So that the exact date still remains uncertain ; Dahl- 
mann, the latest critic, inclining for 1030, and its indisputa- 
ble eclipse. 1 

CHAPTER XL 

MAGNUS THE GOOD AND OTHERS. 

St. Olaf is the highest of these Norway Kings, and is the 
last that much attracts us. For this reason, if a reason were 
not superfluous, we might here end our poor reminescences 
of these dim Sovereigns. But we will, nevertheless, for the 
sake of their connection with bits of English History, still 
hastily mention the names of one or two who follow, and who 
throw a momentary gleam of life and illumination on events 
and epochs ' that have fallen so extinct among ourselves at 
present, though once they were so momentous and memorable. 

The new King Svein, from Jomsburg, Kunt's natural son, 
had no success in Norway, nor seems to have deserved any. 
His English mother and he were found to be grasping, op- 
pressive persons ; and awoke, almost from the instant that 
Olaf was suppressed and crushed away from Norway into 
Heaven, universal odium more and more in that country. 
Well-deservedly, as still appears ; for their taxings and extor- 
tions of malt, of herring, of meal, smith work, and every arti- 
cle taxable in Norway, were extreme ; and their service to the 
country otherwise nearly imperceptible. In brief, their one 
basis there was the power of Knut the Great ; and that, like 
all earthly things, was liable to sudden collapse, — and it suf- 
fered such in a notable degree. King Knut, hardly yet of 
middle age, and the greatest king in the then world, died 
at Shaftesbury, in 1035 as Dahlmann thinks, 2 — leaving two 

! Saxon Chronicle says expressly, under a.d. 1030: "In this year 
King Olaf was slain in Norway by his own people, and was afterward 
sainted." 

" Saxon Chronicle says : ' 1035. In this year died King Cnut. . . 
He departed at Shaftesbury, November 12 ; and they conveyed him 
thence to Winchester and there buried him.' 



84 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

legitimate sons and a busy intriguing widow (Norman Emma, 
widow of Ethelred the Unready), mother of the younger of 
these two ; neither of w T hom proved to have any talent or any 
continuance. In spite of Emma's utmost efforts, Harald, the 
elder son of Knut, not hers, got England for his kingdom ; 
Emma and her Harda-Knut had to be content with Denmark, 
and go thither, much against their will. Harald in England, 
— light-going little figure as his father before him, — got the 
name of Harefoot here ; and might have done good work 
among his now orderly and settled people ; but he died almost 
within year and day, and has left no trace among us, except 
that of ' Harefoot,' from his swift mode of walking. Emma 
and her Harda-Knut now returned joyful to England. But 
the violent, idle, and drunken Harda-Knut did no good there ; 
and, happily for England and him, soon suddenly ended, by 
stroke of apoplexy at a marriage festival, as mentioned above. 
In Denmark he had done still less good. And indeed, under 
him, in a year or two, the grand imperial edifice, laboriously 
built by Knut's valour and wisdom, had already tumbled all 
to the ground, in a most unexpected and remarkable way. 
As we are now to indicate with all brevity. 

Svein's tyrannies in Norway had wrought such fruit that, 
within the four years after Olaf's death, the chief men in Nor- 
way, the very slayers of King Olaf, Kalf Arneson at the head of 
them, met secretly once or twice ; and unanimously agreed that 
Kalf Arneson must go to Sweden, or to Kussia itself ; seek 
young Magnus, son of Olaf, home : excellent Magnus, to be 
king over all Norway and them, instead of this intolerable 
Svein. Which was at once done, — Magnus, brought home in 
a kind of triumph, all Norway waiting for him. Intolerable 
Svein had already been rebelled against : some years before 
this, a certain young Tryggve out of Ireland, authentic son of 
Olaf Tryggveson and of that fine Irish Princess who chose him 
in his low habiliments and low estate, and took him over to 
her own Green Island, — this royal young Tryggve Olafson had 
invaded the usurper Svein in a fierce, valiant, and determined 
manner ; and, though with too small a party, showed excel- 
lent fight for some time ; till Svein, zealously bestirring him- 



MAGNUS THE GOOD AND OTHERS. 80 

self, managed to get him beaten and killed. But that was 
a couple of years ago ; the party still too small, not includ- 
ing one and all as now ! Svein, without stroke of sword this 
time, moved off towards Denmark, never showing face in Nor- 
way again. His drunken brother, Harda-Knut, received him 
brother-like ; even gave him some territory to rule over and 
subsist upon. But he lived only a short while ; was gone be- 
fore Harda-Knut himself ; and we will mention him no more. 
Magnus was a fine bright young fellow, and proved a vali- 
ant, wise, and successful king, known among his people as 
Magnus the Good. He was only natural son of King Olaf ; 
but that made little difference in those times and there. His 
strange -looking, unexpected Latin name he got in this way : 
Alfhild, his mother, a slave through ill-luck of war, though 
nobly born, was seen to be in a hopeful way ; and it was 
known in the King's house how intimately Olaf was connected 
with that occurrence, and how much he loved this ' King's 
serving-maid/ as she was commonly designated. Alfhild was 
brought to bed late at night ; and all the world, especially 
King Olaf, was asleep ; Olaf s strict rule, then and always, 
being, don't awaken me : — seemingly a man sensitive about 
his sleep. The child was a boy, of rather weakly aspect ; no 
important person present, except Sigvat, the King's Icelandic 
Skald, who happened to be still awake ; and the Bishop of 
Norway, who, I suppose, had been sent for in a hurry. " What 
is to be done ? " said the Bishop, " here is an infant in press- 
ing need of baptism ; and we know not what the name is : go, 
Sigvat, awaken the King, and ask." " I dare not for my life," 
answered Sigvat : " King's orders are rigorous on that point.'' 
"But if the child die unbaptized," said the Bishop, shudder- 
ing ; too certain, he and everybody, where the child would go 
in that case ! " I will myself give him a name," said Sigvat, 
with a desperate concentration of all his faculties ; "he shall 
be namesake of the greatest of mankind, — imperial Carolus 
Magnus ; let us call the infant Magnus ! " King Olaf, on the 
morrow, asked rather sharply how Sigvat had dared take such 
a liberty ; but excused Sigvat, seeing what the perilous alter- 
native was. And Magnus, by such accident, this boy was 



86 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

called ; and he, not another, is the prime origin and intro- 
ducer of that name Magnus, which occurs rather frequently, 
not among the Norway Kings only, but by and by among the 
Danish and Swedish ; and, among the Scandinavian popula- 
tions, appears to be rather frequent to this day. 

Magnus, a youth of great spirit, whose own, and standing 
at his beck, all Norway now was, immediately smote home on 
Denmark ; desirous naturally of vengeance for what it had 
done to Norway, and the sacred kindred of Magnus. Den- 
mark, its great Knut gone, and nothing but a drunken Harda- 
Knut, fugitive. Svein & Co., there in his stead, was become a 
weak, dislocated Country. And Magnus plundered in it, 
burnt it, beat it, as often as he pleased ; Harda-Knut strug- 
gling what he could to make resistance or reprisals, but never 
once getting any victory over Magnus. Magnus, I perceive, 
was, like his Father, a skilful as well as valiant fighter by sea 
and land ; Magnus, with good battalions, and probably backed 
by immediate alliance with Heaven and St. Olaf, as was then 
the general belief or surmise about him, could not easily be 
beaten. And the truth is, he never was, by Harda-Knut or 
any other. Harda-Knut's last transaction with him was, To 
make a firm Peace and even Family-treaty sanctioned by all 
the grandees of both countries, who did indeed mainly them- 
selves make it ; their two Kings assenting : That there should 
be perpetual Peace, and no thought of war more, between 
Denmark and Norway ; and that, if either of the Kings died 
childless while the other w r as reigning, the other should suc- 
ceed him in both Kingdoms. A magnificent arrangement, 
such as has several times been made in the world's history ; 
but which in this instance, what is very singular, took actual 
effect ; drunken Harda-Knut dying so speedily, and Magnus 
being the man he was. One would like to give the date of 
this remarkable Treaty ; but cannot with precision. Guess 
somewhere about 1040 : ' actual fruition of it came to Magnus, 
beyond question, in 1042, when Harda-Knut drank that was- 
sail bowl at the wedding at Lambeth, and fell down dead ; 
which in the Saxon Chronicle is dated 3rd June of that year. 
1 Munch gives the date 1038 (ii; 840), Adam or Bremen, 1040. 



MAGNUS THE GOOD AND OTHERS. 87 

Magnus at once went to Denmark on hearing this event ; was 
joyfully received by the head men there, who indeed, with 
their fellows in Norway, had been main contrivers of the 
Treaty ; both Countries longing for mutual peace, and the end 
of such incessant broils. 

Magnus was triumphantly received as King in Denmark. 
The only unfortunate thing was that Svein Estrithson, the 
exile son of Ulf, Knut's Brother-in-law, whom Knut, as we 
saw, had summarily killed twelve years before, emerged from 
his exile in Sweden in a nattering form ; and proposed that 
Magnus should make him Jarl of Denmark, and general ad- 
ministrator there in his own stead. To which the sanguine 
Magnus, in spite of advice to the contrary, insisted on acced- 
ing. "Too powerful a Jarl," said Einar Tamberskelver — the 
same Einar whose bow was heard to break in Olaf Trygg- 
veson's last battle ("Norway breaking from thy hand, King ! "), 
who had now become Magnus's chief man, and had long been 
among the highest chiefs of Norway ; " too powerful a Jarl/' 
said Einar, earnestly. But Magnus disregarded it; and a 
troublesome experience had to teach him that it was true. In 
about a year, crafty Svein, bringing ends to meet, got himself 
declared King of Denmark for his own behoof, instead of Jarl 
for another's : and had to be driven and beaten out by Mag- 
nus. Beaten every year ; but almost always returned next 
year for a new beating, — almost, though not altogether ; hav- 
ing at length got one dreadful smashing-down and half-kill- 
ing, which held him quiet a while, — so long as Magnus lived. 
Nay, in the end he made good his point, as if by mere patience 
in being beaten ; and did become king himself, and progenitor 
of all the kings that followed. King Svein Estrithson ; so 
called from Astrid or Estrith, his mother, the great Knut's 
sister, daughter of Svein Forkbeard by that amazing Sigrid 
the Proud, who burnt those two ineligible suitors of hers both 
at once, and got a switch on the face from Olaf Tryggveson, 
which proved the death of that high man. 

But all this high fortune of the often-beaten Estrithson was 
posterior to Magnus's death ; who never would have suffered 
it, had he been alive. Magnus was a mighty tighter ; a fiery 



88 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

man ; very proud and positive, among other qualities, and 
had such luck as was never seen before. Luck invariably 
good, said everybody ; never once was beaten, — which proves, 
continued everybody, that his Father Olaf and the miraculous 
power of Heaven were with him always. Magnus, I believe, 
did put down a great deal of anarchy in those countries. One 
of his earliest enterprises was to abolish Jomsburg, and 
trample out that nest of pirates. Which he managed so com- 
pletely that Jomsburg remained a mere reminiscence thence- 
forth ; and its place is not now known to any mortal. 

One perverse thing did at last turn up in the course of Mag- 
nus : a new Claimant for the Crown of Norway, and he a for- 
midable person withal. This was Harald, half-brother of the 
late Saint Olaf ; uncle or half-uncle, therefore, of Magnus him- 
self. Indisputable son of the Saint's mother by St. Olaf's 
step-father, who was himself descended straight from Harald 
Haarfagr. This new Harald was already much heard of in 
the world. As an ardent Boy of fifteen he had fought at 
King Olaf's side at Stickelstad ; would not be admonished by 
the Saint to go away. Got smitten down there, not killed ; 
was smuggled away that night from the field by friendly help ; 
got cured of his wounds, forwarded to Eussia, where he grew 
to man's estate, under bright auspices and successes. Fell in 
love with the Eussian Princess, but could not get her to 
wife ; went off thereupon to Constantinople as Vceringer (Life- 
Guardsman of the Greek Kaiser) ; became Chief Captain of 
the Vseringers, invincible champion of the poor Kaisers that 
then were, and filled all the East with the shine and noise of 
his exploits. An authentic Waring or Baring, such the sur- 
name we now have derived from these people ; who were an 
important institution in those Greek countries for several 
ages : Vaeringer Life-Guard, consisting of Norsemen, with 
sometimes a few English among them. Harald had innumer- 
able adventures, nearly always successful, sing the Skalds ; 
gained a great deal of wealth, gold ornaments, and gold coin ; 
had even Queen Zoe (so they sing, though falsely) enamoured 
of him at one time ; and was himself a Skald of eminence ; 



MAGNUS THE GOOD AND OTHERS. 89 

some of whose verses, by no means the worst of their kind, 
remain to this day. 

This character of Waring much distinguishes Harald to me ; 
the only Vseringer of whom I could ever get the least biogra- 
phy, true or half-true. It seems the Greek History-books but 
indifferently correspond with these Saga records ; and scholars 
say there could have been no considerable romance between 
Zoe and him, Zoe at that date being sixty years of age ! 
Harald's own lays say nothing of any Zoe, but are still full of 
longing for his Kussian Princess far away. 

At last, what with Zoes, what with Greek perversities and 
perfidies, and troubles that could not fail, he determined on 
quitting Greece ; packed up his immensities of wealth in suc- 
cinct shape, and actually returned to Kussia, where new hon- 
ours and favours awaited him from old friends, and especially, 
if I mistake not, the hand of that adorable Princess, crown of 
all his wishes for the time being. Before long, however, he 
decided farther to look after his Norway Eoyal heritages ; and, 
for that purpose, sailed in force to the Jarl or quasi-King of 
Denmark, the often-beaten Svein, who was now in Sweden on 
his usual winter exile after beating. Svein and he had evi- 
dently interests in common. Svein was charmed to see him, 
— so warlike, glorious, and renowned a man, with masses of 
money about him too. Svein did by and by become treacher- 
ous ; and even attempted, one night, to assassinate Harald in 
his bed on board ship : but Harald, vigilant of Svein, and a 
man of quick and sure insight, had providently gone to sleep 
elsewhere, leaving a log instead of himself among the blankets. 
In which log, next morning, treacherous Svein's battle-axe was 
found deejDly sticking ; and could not be removed without 
difficulty ! But this was after Harald and King Magnus him- 
self had begun treating, with the fairest prospects, — which 
this of the Svein battle-axe naturally tended to forward, as it 
altogether ended the other copartnery. 

Magnus, on first hearing of Vseringer Harald and his inten- 
tions, made instant equipment, and determination to fight his 
uttermost against the same. But wise persons of influence 
round him, as did the like sort round Vccringer Harald, ear- 



90 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

nestly advised compromise and peaceable agreement. "Which, 
soon after that of Svein's nocturnal battle-axe, was the course 
adopted ; and, to the joy of all parties, did prove a successful 
solution. Magnus agreed to part his kingdom with Uncle 
Harald ; Uncle parting his treasures, or uniting them with 
Magnus's poverty. Each was to be an independent king, but 
they were to govern in common ; Magnus rather presiding. 
He to sit, for example, in the High Seat alone ; King Harald 
opposite him in a seat not quite so high, though if a stranger 
king came on visit, both the Norse Kings were to sit in the 
High Seat. With various other punctilious regulations, which 
the fiery Magnus was extremely strict with ; rendering the 
mutual relation a very dangerous one, had not both the Kings 
been honest men, and Harald a much more prudent and tol- 
erant one than Magnus. They, on the whole, never had any 
weighty quarrel, thanks now and then rather to Harald than 
to Magnus. Magnus too was very noble ; and Harald, with 
his wide experience and greater length of years, carefully held 
his heat of temper well covered in. 

Prior to Uncle Harald's coming, Magnus had distinguished 
himself as a Lawgiver. His Code of Laws for the Trondhjeni 
Province was considered a pretty piece of legislation ; and in 
subsequent times got the name of ' Grey-goose ' (Gragas), — 
one of the wonderfullest names ever given to a wise Book. 
Some say it came from the grey colour of the parchment, some 
give other incredible origins ; the last guess I have heard is that 
the name merely denotes antiquity ; the witty name in Norway 
for a man growing old having been, in those times, that he 
was now becoming a grey-goose. Very fantastic, indeed ; 
certain, however, that Grey-goose is the name of that ven- 
erable Law Book ; nay, there is another, still more famous, 
belonging to Iceland, and not far from a century younger, 
the Iceland Grey-goose. The Norway one is perhaps of date 
about 1037, the other of about 1118 ; peace be with them 
both ! Or, if anybody is inclined to such matters, let him go 
to Dahlmann, for the amplest information and such minute- 
ness of detail as might almost enable him to be an Advocate, 
with Silk Gown, in any Court depending on these Grey-geese. 



MAGNUS THE GOOD AND OTHERS. 91 

Magnus did not live long. He had a dream one night of 
his Father Olaf's coming to him in shining presence, and 
announcing, That a magnificent fortune and world-great re- 
nown was now possible for him ; but that perhaps it was 
his duty to refuse it ; in which case, his earthly life would be 
short. " Which way wilt thou do, then ? " said the shining 
presence. "Thou shalt decide for me, Father— thou, not 
I ! " and told his Uncle Harald on the morrow, adding that 
he thought he should now soon die ; which proved to be the 
fact. The magnificent fortune, so questionable otherwise, has 
reference, no doubt, to the Conquest of England ; to which 
country Magnus, as rightful and actual King of Denmark, as 
well as undisputed heir to drunken Harda-Knut, by treaty 
long ago, had now some evident claim. The enterprise itself 
was reserved to the patient, gay, and prudent Uncle Harald ; 
and to him it did prove fatal, — and merely paved the way for 
Another, luckier, not likelier ! 

Svein Estrithson, always beaten during Magnus's life, by 
and by got an agreement from the prudent Harald to be King 
of Denmark, then ; and end these wearisome and ineffectual 
brabbles ; Harold having other work to do. But in the 
autumn of 1066, Tosti, a younger son of our English Earl 
Godwin, came to Svein's court w T ith a most important an- 
nouncement ; namely, that King Edward the Confessor, so 
called, was dead, and that Harold, as the English write it, his 
eldest Brother, would give him, Tosti, no sufficient share in 
the kingship. Which state of matters, if Svein would go 
ahead with him to rectify it, would be greatly to the advan- 
tage of Svein. Svein, taught by many beatings, was too wise 
for this proposal ; refused Tosti, who indignantly stepped 
over into Norway, and proposed it to King Harald there. 
Svein really had acquired considerable teaching, I should 
guess, from his much beating and hard experience in the 
world ; one finds him afterwards the esteemed friend of the 
famed Historian Adam of Bremen, who reports various wise 
humanities and pleasant disco ursings with Svein Estrithson. 

As for Harald Hardrade, 'Harald the Hard or Severe,' as 
he was now called, Tosti's proposal awakened in him all his 



92 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

old Vaeringer ambitions and cupidities into blazing vehe- 
mence. He zealously consented ; and at once, with his whole 
strength, embarked in the adventure. Fitted out two hun- 
dred ships, and the biggest army he could carry in them ; 
and sailed with Tosti towards the dangerous Promised Land. 
Got into the Tvne, and took booty ; got into the Humber, 
thence into the Ouse ; easily subdued any opposition the 
official people or their populations could make ; victoriously 
scattered these ; victoriously took the City of York in a day ; 
and even got himself homaged there, ' King of Northumber- 
land,' as per covenant, — Tosti proving honourable, — Tosti and 
he going with faithful strict copartnery, and all things look- 
ing prosperous and glorious. Except only (an important ex- 
ception !) that they learnt for certain English Harold was ad- 
vancing with all his strength, and in a measurable space of 
hours, unless care were taken, would be in York himself. 
Harald and Tosti hastened off to seize the post of Stamford 
Bridge on Derwent River, six or seven miles east of York 
City, and there bar this dangerous advent. Their own ships 
lay not far off in Ouse Eiver, in case of the worst. The 
battle that ensued the next day, September 20, 1066, is for- 
ever memorable in English history. 

Snorro gives vividly enough his view of it from the Ice- 
landic side : A ring of stalwart Norsemen, close ranked, with 
their steel tools in hand ; English Harold's Army, mostly cav- 
alry, prancing and pricking all round ; trying to find or make 
some opening in that ring. For a long time trying in vain, 
till at length, getting them enticed to burst out somewhere 
in pursuit, they quickly turn round, and quickly made an 
end of that matter. Snorro represents English Harold, with 
a first party of these horse, coming up, and, with preliminary 
salutations, asking if Tosti were there, and if Harald were ; 
making generous proposals to Tosti ; but, in regard to Har- 
ald, and what share of England was to be his, answering Tosti 
with the words, " Seven feet of English earth, or more if he 
require it, for a grave." Upon which Tosti, like an honour- 
able man and copartner, said, " No, never ; let us fight you 
rather till we all die." "Who is this that spoke to you?" in- 



MAGNUS THE GOOD AND OTHERS. 93 

quired Harald, when the cavaliers had withdrawn. li My 
brother Harold," answers Tosti, which looks rather like a 
Saga, but may be historical after all. Snorro's history of the 
battle is intelligible only after you have premised to it, what 
he never hints at, that the scene was on the east side of the 
bridge and of the Derwent ; the great struggle for the bridge, 
one at last finds, was after the fall of Harald ; and to the Eng- 
lish Chroniclers, said struggle, which was abundantly severe, 
is all they know of the battle. 

Enraged at that breaking loose of his steel ring of infantry, 
Norse Harald blazed up into true Norse fury, all the old 
Vaeringer and Berserkir rage awakening in him ; sprang forth 
into the front of the fight, and mauled and cut and smashed 
down on both hands of him everything he met, irresistible by 
any horse or man, till an arrow cut him through the wind- 
pipe, and laid him low forever. That was the end of King 
Harald and of his workings in this world. The circumstance 
that he was a Waring or Baring, and had smitten to pieces so 
many Oriental cohorts or crowds, and had made love-verses 
(kind of iron madrigals) to his Russian Princess, and caught 
the fancy of questionable Greek queens, and had amassed 
such heaps of money, while poor nephew Magnus had only 
one gold ring (which had been his father's, and even his 
father's mother's, as Uncle Harald noticed), and nothing more 
whatever of that precious metal to combine with Harald's 
treasures : — all this is new to me, naturally no hint of it in any 
English book ; and lends some gleam of romantic splendour 
to that dim business of Stamford Bridge, now fallen so dull 
and torpid to most English minds, transcendently important 
as it once was to all Englishmen. Adam of Bremen says the 
English got as much gold plunder from Harald's people as 
was a heavy burden for twelve men; 1 a thing evidently im- 
possible, which nobody need try to believe. Young Olaf, 
Harald's son, age about sixteen, steering down the Ouse at 
the top of his speed, escaped home to Norway with all his 
ships, and subsequently reigned there with Magnus, his 
brother. Harald's body did lie in English earth for about a 
1 Camden, Rapin, &c, quote. 



1)4 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

year ; but was then brought to Norway for burial. He needed 
more than seven feet of grave, say some ; Laing, interpreting 
Snorro's measurements, makes Harald eight feet in stature, — 
I do hope with some error in excess ! 



CHAPTER XII. 

OLAF THE TRANQUIL, MAGNUS BAREFOOT, AND SIGURD THE CRUSADER. 

The new King Olaf, his brother Magnus having soon 
died, bore rule in Norway for some five-and-twenty years. 
Rule soft and gentle, not like his father's, and inclining rather 
to improvement in the arts and elegancies than to anything 
severe or dangerously laborious. A slim-built, witty-talking, 
popular, and pretty man, with uncommonly bright eyes, and 
hair like floss silk : they called him Olaf Kyrre (the Tranquil 
or Easy-going). 

The ceremonials of the palace were much improved b}- him. 
Palace still continued to be built of huge logs pyramidally 
sloping upwards, with fire-place in the middle of the floor, and 
no egress for smoke or ingress for light except right over- 
head, which in bad weather you could shut or all but shut, 
with a lid. Lid originally made of mere opaque board, but 
changed latterly into a light frame, covered (glazed, so to 
speak) with entrails of animals, clarified into something of 
pellucidity. All thia Olaf, I hope, further perfected, as he did 
the placing of the court ladies, court officials, and the like ; 
but I doubt if the luxury of a glass window were ever known 
to him, or a cup to drink from that was not made of metal or 
iron. In fact it is chiefly for his son's sake I mention him 
here ; and with the son, too, I have little real concern, but 
only a kind of fantastic. 

This son bears the name of Magnus Barfod (Barefoot, or 
Bareleg) ; and if you ask why so, the answer is : He was used 
to appear in the streets of Nidaros (Trondhjem) now and then 
in complete Scotch Highland dress, — authentic tartan plaid 






OLAF THE TRANQUIL AND OTHERS. 95 

and philibeg, at that epoch, — to the wonder of Trondhjem and 
us ! The truth is, he had a mighty fancy for these Hebrides 
and other Scotch possessions of his ; and seeing England now 
quite impossible, eagerly speculated on some conquest in Ire- 
land as next best. He did, in fact, go diligently voyaging 
and inspecting among those Orkney and Hebridian Isles ; 
putting everything straight there, appointing stringent author- 
ities, jarls, — nay, a king, 'Kingdom of the Suderoer ' (South- 
ern Isles, now called Sodor), — and, as first king, Sigurd, his 
pretty little boy of nine years. All which done, and some 
quarrel with Sweden fought out, he seriously applied himself 
to visiting in a still more emphatic manner ; namely, to in- 
vading, with his best skill and strength, the considerable vir- 
tual or actual kingdom he had in Ireland, intending fully to 
enlarge it to the utmost limits of the Island if possible. He 
got prosperously into Dublin (guess a.d. 1102). Considerable 
authority he already had, even among those poor Irish kings, 
or kinglets, in their glibs and yellow saffron gowns ; still 
more, I suppose, among the numerous Norse Principalities 
there. c KingMurdog, King of Ireland,' says the Chronicle 
of Min, 'had obliged himself, every Yule-day, to take a pair 
of shoes, hang them over his shoulder, as your servant does 
on a journey, and walk across his court at bidding and in 
presence of Magnus Barefoot' s messenger, by way of homage 
to the said King.' Murdog on this greater occasion did what- 
ever homage could be required of him ; but that, though 
comfortable, was far from satisfying the great King's am- 
bitious mind. The great King left Murdog ; left his own 
Dublin ; marched off westward on a general conquest of Ire- 
land. Marched easily victorious for a time ; had got, some 
say, into the wilds of Connaught, but there saw himself be- 
set by ambuscades and wild Irish countenances intent on mis- 
chief, and had, on the sudden, to draw up for battle ; — place, 
I regret to say, altogether undiscoverable to me ; known 
only that it was boggy in the extreme. Certain enough, too 
certain and evident, Magnus Barefoot, searching eagerly, 
could find no firm footing there ; nor, fighting furiously up 
to the knees or deeper, any result but honourable death ! 



^ 






96 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

Date is confidently marked ' 24 August, 1103/ — as if people 
knew the very day of the month. The natives did humanely 
give King Magnus Christian burial. The remnants of his 
force, without farther molestation, found their ships on the 
coast of Ulster ; and sailed home, — without conquest of Ire- 
land ; nay, perhaps leaving royal Murdog disposed to be re- 
lieved of his procession with the pair of shoes. 

Magnus Barefoot left three sons, all kings at once, reigning 
peaceably together. But to us, at present, the only noteworthy 
one of them w x as Sigurd ; who, finding nothing special to do 
at home, left his brothers to manage for him, and went off on 
a far Voyage, which has rendered him distinguishable in the 
crowd. Voyage through the Strait of Gibraltar, on to Jeru- 
salem, thence to Constantinople ; and so home through Rus- 
sia, shining with such renown as filled all Norway for the time 
being. A king called Sigurd Jorsalafarer (Jerusalemer\ or 
Sigurd the Crusader, henceforth. His voyage had been only 
partially of the Viking type ; in general it was of the Boyal- 
Progress kind rather ; Vikingism only intervening in cases of 
incivility or the like. His reception in the Courts of Portugal, 
Spain, Sicily, Italy, had been honourable and sumptuous. The 
King of Jerusalem broke out into utmost splendour and effu- 
sion at sight of such a pilgrim ; and Constantinople did its 
highest honours to such a Prince of Vaeringers. And the 
truth is Sigurd intrinsically was a wise, able, and prudent 
man ; who, surviving both his brothers, reigned a good while 
alone in a solid and successful way. He shows features of an 
original, independent, thinking man ; something of ruggedly 
strong, sincere, and honest, with peculiarities that are amiable 
and even pathetic in the character and temperament of him ; 
as certainly the course of life he took was of his own choosing, 
and peculiar enough. He happens furthermore to be, what 
he least of all could have chosen or expected, the last of the 
Haarfagr Genealogy that had any success, or much deserved 
any, in this world. The last of the Haarfagrs, or as good as 
the last ! So that, singular to say, it is in reality for one 






OLAF THE TRANQUIL AND OTHERS. 97 

thing only that Sigurd, after all his crusadings and wonderful 
adventures, is memorable to us here : the advent of an Irish 
Gentleman called ' Gylle Krist ' (Gilchrist, Servant of Christ), 
whc^ — n ot over welcome, I should think, but (unconsciously) 
big with the above result, — appeared in Norway while King- 
Sigurd was supreme. Let us explain a little. 

This Gylle Krist, the unconsciously fatal individual, who 
* spoke Norse imperfectly/ declared himself to be the natural 
son of whilom Magnus Barefoot ; born to him there while en- 
gaged in that unfortunate 'Cdnquest of Ireland.' "Here is 
my mother come with me/' said Gilchrist, " who declares my 
real baptismal name to have been Harald, given me by that 
great king ; and who will carry the red-hot ploughshares or 
do any reasonable ordeal in testimony of these facts. I am 
King Sigurd's veritable half-brother : what will King Sigurd 
think it fair to do with me ? " Sigurd clearly seems to have 
believed the man to be speaking truth ; and, indeed, nobody 
to have doubted but he was. Sigurd said, " Honourable sus- 
tenance shalt thou have from me here. But, under pain of 
extirpation, swear that neither in my time nor in that of my 
young son Magnus wilt thou ever claim any share in this 
Government." Gylle swore ; and punctually kept his promise 
during Sigurd's reign. But during Magnus's he conspicuously 
broke it ; and, in result, through many reigns, and during 
three or four generations afterwards, produced unspeakable 
contentions, massacrings, confusions in the country he had 
adopted. There are reckoned, from the time of Sigurd's death 
(a. d. 1130), about a hundred years of civil war : no king 
allowed to distinguish himself by a solid reign of well-doing, 
or by any continuing reign at all, — sometimes as many as four 
kings simultaneously fighting ;— and in Norway, from sire to 
son, nothing but sanguinary anarchy, disaster, and bewilder- 
ment ; a Country sinking steadily as if towards absolute ruin. 
Of all which frightful misery and discord Irish Gylle, styled 
afterwards King Harald Gylle, was, by ill destiny and other- 
wise, the visible origin : an illegitimate Irish Haarfagr who 
proved to be his own destruction, and that of the Haarfagr 
kindred altogether ! 
7 



98 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

Sigurd himself seems always to have rather favoured Gylle, 
who was a cheerful, shrewd, patient, witty, and effective fel- 
low ; and had at first much quizzing to endure, from the 
younger kind, on account of his Irish way of speaking Norse, 
and for other reasons. One evening, for example, while the 
drink was going round, Gylle mentioned that the Irish had a 
wonderful talent of swift running, and that there were among 
them people who could keep up with the swiftest horse. At 
which, especially from young Magnus, there were peals of 
laughter ; and a declaration from the latter that Gylle and he 
would have it tried to-morrow morning ! Gylle in vain urged 
that he had not himself professed to be so swift a runner as 
to keep up with the Prince's horses ; but only that there were 
men in Ireland who could. Magnus was positive, and early 
next morning Gylle had to be on the ground ; and the race, 
nationally under heavy bet, actually went off. Gylle started 
parallel to Magnus's stirrup ; ran like a very roe, and was 
clearly ahead at the goal. "Unfair," said Magnus ; "thou 
must have had hold of my stirrup-leather and helped thyself 
along ; we must try it again." Gylle ran behind the horse 
this second time ; then at the end sprang forward, and again 
was fairly in ahead. " Thou must have held by the tail," said 
Magnus ; " not by fair running was this possible ; we must 
try a third time ! " Gylle started ahead of Magnus and his 
horse this third time ; kept ahead with increasing distance, 
Magnus galloping his very best ; and reached the goal more 
palpably foremost than ever. So that Magnus had to pay his 
bet, and other damage and humiliation. And got from his 
father, who heard of it soon afterwards, scoffing rebuke as a 
silly fellow, who did not know the worth of men, but only the 
clothes and rank of them, and well deserved what he had got 
from Gylle. All the time King Sigurd lived, Gylle seems to 
have had good recognition and protection from that famous 
man ; and, indeed, to have gained favour all round by his 
quiet social demeanour and the qualities he showed. 



MAGNUS THE BLIND AND OTHERS. 99 



CHAPTER Xm. 

MAGNUS THE BLIND, HARALD GYLLE, AND MUTUAL EXTINCTION OF 
THE HAARFAGRS. 

On Sigurd the Crusader's death, Magnus naturally came to 
the throne ; Gylle keeping silence and a cheerful face for the 
time. But it was not long till claim arose on Gylle's part, till 
war and fight arose between Magnus and him, till the skilful, 
popular, ever-active, and shifty Gylle had entirely beaten Mag- 
nus ; put out his eyes ; mutilated the poor body of him hi a 
horrid and unnamable manner, and shut him up in a convent 
as out of the game henceforth. There in his dark misery 
Magnus lived now as a monk, — called ' Magnus the Blind ' by 
those Norse populations ; King Harald Gylle reigning vic- 
toriously in his stead. But this also was only for a time. 
There arose avenging kinsfolk of Magnus, who had no Irish 
accent in their Norse, and were themselves eager enough to 
bear rule in their native country. By one of these, a terribly 
strong-handed, fighting, violent, and regardless fellow, who 
also was a Bastard of Magnus Barefoot, and had been made a 
Priest, but liked it unbearably ill, and had broken loose from 
it into the wildest courses at home and abroad ; so that his 
current name got to be ■ Slembi-diakn,' Slim or 111 Deacon, 
under which he is much noised of in Snorro and the Sagas ; 
by this Slim-Deacon, Gylle was put an end to (murdered by 
night, drunk, in his sleep) ; and poor blind Magnus was 
brought out, and again set to act as King, or King's Cloak, in 
hopes Gylle's posterity would never rise to victory more. But 
Gylle's posterity did, to victory and also to defeat, and were 
the death of Magnus and of Slim-Deacon, too, in a frightful 
way ; and all got their own death by and by in a ditto. In 
brief, these two kindreds (reckoned to be authentic enough 
Haarfagr people, both kinds of them) proved now to have be- 
come a veritable crop of dragon's teeth ; who mutually fought, 
plotted, struggled, as if it had been their life's business ; 
never ended fighting, and seldom long intermitted it, till they 



100 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

had exterminated one another, and did at last all rest in death. 
One of these later Gylle temporary kings I remember by the 
name of Harald Herdebred, Harald with the Broad Shoul- 
ders. The very last of them I think was Harald Mund 
(Harald with the Wry-Mouth), who gave rise to two Impostors, 
pretending to be Sons of his, a good while after the poor 
Wry-Mouth itself and all its troublesome belongings were 
quietly underground. What Norway suffered during that sad 
century may be imagined. 



CHAPTEE XIV. 

SVERKIK AND DESCENDANTS, TO HAKON THE OLD. 

The end of it was, or rather the first abatement and begin- 
ning of the end, That, when all this had gone on ever 
worsening for some forty years or so, one Sverrir (a.d. 1177), 
at the head of an armed mob of poor people called Birkebeins, 
came upon the scene. A strange enough figure in History, 
this Sverrir and his Birkebeins ! At first a mere mockery and 
dismal laughing-stock to the enlightened Norway public. 
Nevertheless, by unheard of fighting, hungering, exertion, and 
endurance, Sverrir, after ten years of such a death-wrestle 
against men and things, got himself accepted as King ; and 
by wonderful expenditure of ingenuity, common cunning, 
unctuous Parliamentary Eloquence or almost Popular Preach- 
ing, and (it must be owned) general human faculty and 
valour (or value) in the overclouded and distorted state, did 
victoriously continue such. And founded a New Dynasty in 
Norway, which ended only with Norway's separate existence, 
after near three hundred years. 

This Sverrir called himself a Son of Harald Wry-Mouth ; 
but was in reality the son of a poor Comb-maker in some 
little town of Norway ; nothing heard of Sonship to Wry- 
Mouth till after good success otherwise. His Birkebeins 
(that is to say, Birchlegs ; the poor rebellious wretches having 
taken to the woods ; and been obliged, besides their intoler- 
able scarcity of food, to thatch their bodies from the cold 



SVERRIR AND DESCENDANTS, TO HAKON TEE OLD. 101 

with whatever covering could be got, and their legs especially 
with birch bark, — sad species of fleecy hosiery, — whence 
their nickname), — his Birkebeins I guess always to have been 
a kind of Norse Jacquerie : desperate rising of thralls and in- 
digent people, driven mad by their unendurable sufferings 
and famishings, — theirs the deepest stratum of misery, and 
the densest and heaviest, in this the general misery of Norway, 
which had lasted towards the third generation, and looked 
as if it would last forever : — whereupon they had risen pro- 
claiming, in this furious dumb manner, unintelligible except 
to Heaven, that the same could not, nor would not be endured 
any longer ! And by their Sverrir, strange to say, they did 
attain a kind of permanent success ; and, from being a dis- 
mal laughing-stock in Norway, came to be important, and for 
a time all-important there. Their opposition nicknames, 
' Baglers ' (from Bagall, baculus, bishop's staff ; Bishop Nicholas 
being chief Leader), ' Gold-legs,' and the like obscure terms 
(for there was still a considerable course of counter-fighting 
ahead, and especially of counter-nicknaming), I take to have 
meant in Norse prefigurement seven centuries ago, ' bloated 
Aristocracy,' ' tyrannous Bourgeoisie/ — till in the next century 
these rents were got closed again ! — 

King Sverrir, not himself bred to comb-making, had in his 
fifth year gone to an uncle, Bishop in the Faroe Islands : and 
got some considerable education from him, with a view to 
Priesthood on the part of Sverrir. But, not liking that 
career, Sverrir had fled and smuggled himself over to the 
Birkebeins, who, noticing the learned tongue, and other mi- 
raculous qualities of the man, proposed to make him Cap- 
tain of them ; and even threatened to kill him if he would 
not accept, — which thus at the sword's point, as Sverrir says, 
he was obliged to do. It was after this that he thought of 
becoming son of Wry-Mouth and other higher things. 

His Birkebeins and he had certainly a talent of campaign- 
ing which has hardly ever been equalled. They fought like 
devils against any odds of number ; and before battle they 
have been known to march six days together without food, 
except, perhaps, the inner bark of trees, and in such clothing 



102 EARLY KIN QS OF NORWAY. 

and shoeing as mere birch bark : — at one time, somewhere in 
the Dovrefjeld, there was serious counsel held among them 
whether they should not all, as one man, leap down into the 
frozen gulfs and precipices, or at once massacre one another 
wholly, and so finish. Of their conduct in battle, fiercer than 
that of Baresarks, where was there ever seen the parallel? 
In truth they are a dim, strange object to one in that black 
time ; wondrously bringing light into it withal ; and proved 
to be, under such unexpected circumstances, the beginning of 
better days ! 

Of Sverrir's public speeches there still exist authentic speci- 
mens ; wonderful indeed, and much characteristic of such a 
Sverrir. A comb-maker King, evidently meaning several 
good and solid things, and effecting them too, athwart such 
an element of Norwegian chaos-come-again. His descend- 
ants and successors were a comparatively respectable kin. 
The last and greatest of them I shall mention is Hakon VEL, 
or Hakon the Old ; whose fame is still lively among us, from 
the Battle of Largs, at least. 



CHAPTEE XV. 

HAKON THE OLD AT LAKGS. 

In the Norse annals our famous Battle of Largs makes 
small figure, or almost none at all, among Hakon's battles and 
feats. They do say indeed, these Norse annalists, that the 
King of Scotland, Alexander III. (who had such a fate among 
the crags about Kinghorn in time coming), was very anxious 
to purchase from King Hakon his sovereignty of the Western 
Isles ; but that Hakon pointedly refused ; and at length, be- 
ing again importuned and bothered on the business, decided 
on giving a refusal that could not be mistaken. Decided, 
namely, to go with a big expedition, and look thoroughly 
into that wing of his Dominions ; where no doubt much has 
fallen awry since Magnus Barefoot's grand visit thither, and 
seems to be inviting the cupidity of bad neighbors! "All 
this we will put right again," thinks Hakon, " and gird it up 



HAKON THE OLD AT LARGS. 103 

into a safe and defensive posture." Hakon sailed accord- 
ingly, with a strong fleet ; adjusting and rectifying among his 
Hebrides as he went along, and landing withal on the Scotch 
coast to plunder and punish as he thought fit. The Scots 
say he had claimed of them Arran, Bute, and the Tw T o Cum- 
braes (" given my ancestors by Donald Bain," said Hakon, 
to the amazement of the Scots) "as parts of the Sudoer" 
(Southern Isles) : — so far from selling that fine kingdom! — 
and that it was after taking both Arran and Bute that he 
made his descent at Largs. 

Of Largs there is no mention whatever in Norse books. 
But beyond any doubt, such is the other evidence, Hakon 
did land there ; land and fight, not conquering, probably 
rather beaten ; and very certainly 'retiring to his ships,' as 
in either case he behooved to do ! It is further certain he 
was dreadfully maltreated by the weather on those wild 
coasts ; and altogether credible, as the Scotch records bear, 
that he was so at Largs very specially. The Norse Kecords 
or Sagas say merely he lost many of his ships by the tem- 
pests, and many of his men by land fighting in various parts, 
— tacitly including Largs, no doubt, which was the last of 
these misfortunes to him. 'In the battle here he lost 15,000 
men, say the Scots, we 5,000 ! ' Divide these numbers by 
ten, and the excellently brief and lucid Scottish summary by 
Buchanan may be taken as the approximately true and exact. 1 
Date of the battle is a.d. 1263. 

To this day, on a little plain to the south of the village, 
now town, of Largs, in Ayrshire, there are seen stone cairns 
and monumental heaps, and, until within a century ago, one 
huge, solitary, upright stone ; still mutely testifying to a bat- 
tle there— altogether clearly to this battle of King Hakon's ; 
who by the Norse records, too, was in these neighborhoods at 
that same date, and evidently in an aggressive, high kind of 
humour. For ' while his ships and army were doubling the 
Mull of Cantire, he had his own boat set on wheels, and 
therein, splendidly enough, had himself drawn across the 
Promontory at a flatter part,' no doubt with horns sound- 
1 Buchanani Hist. , i. 130. 



104 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

ing, banners waving. " All to the left of me is mine and Nor* 
way's," exclaimed Hakon in his triumphant boat progress, 
which such disasters soon followed. 

Hakon gathered his wrecks together, and sorrowfully made 
for Orkney. It is possible enough, as our Guide-Books now 
say, he may have gone by Iona, Mull, and the narrow seas in- 
side of Skye ; and that the Kyle Akin, favourably known to 
sea-bathers in that region, may actually mean the Kyle (nar- 
row strait) of Hakon, where Hakon may have dropped 
anchor, and rested for a little while in smooth water and 
beautiful environment, safe from equinoctial storms. But 
poor Hakon's heart was now broken. He went to Orkney ; 
died there in the winter ; never beholding Norway more. 

He it was who got Iceland, which had been a Republic for 
four centuries, united to his kingdom of Norway : a long and 
intricate operation,-^- much presided over by our Snorro Stur- 
leson, so often quoted here, who indeed lost his life (by as- 
sassination from his sons-in-law), — and out of great wealth 
sank at once into poverty of zero, — one midnight in his own 
cellar, in the course of that bad business. Hakon was a great 
Politician in his time ; and succeeded in many things before 
he lost Largs. Snorro's death by murder had happened about 
twenty years before Hakon's by broken heart. He is called 
Hakon the Old, though one finds his age was but fifty-nine, 
probably a longish life for a Norway king. Snorro's narrative 
ceases when Snorro himself was born ; that is to say, at the 
threshold of King Sverrir ; of whose exploits and doubtful 
birth it is guessed by some that Snorro willingly forbore to 
speak in the hearing of such a Hakon. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



EPILOGUE. 

Haarfagr's kindred lasted some three centuries in Norway ; 
Sverrir's lasted into its third century there ; how long after 
this, among the neighbouring kingships, I did not inquire. 
For, by regal affinities, consanguinities, and unexpected 
chances and changes, the three Scandinaviar lrin adorns fell 



EPILOGUE. 105 

all peaceably together under Queen Margaret, of the Calmar 
Union (a.d. 1397) ; and Norway, incorporated now with Den- 
mark, needed no more kings. 

The History of these Haarfagrs has awakened in me many 
thoughts of Despotism and Democracy, arbitrary government 
by one, and self-government (which means no government, or 
anarchy) by all ; of Dictatorship with many faults, and Uni- 
versal Suffrage with little possibility of any virtue. For the 
contrast between Olaf Tryggveson and a Universal-Suffrage 
Parliament or an ' Imperial' Copper Captain has, in these 
nine centuries, grown to be very great. And the eternal 
Providence that guides all this, and produces alike these en- 
tities with their epochs, is not its course still through the 
great deep ? Does not it still speak to us, if we have ears ? 
Here, clothed in stormy enough passions and instincts, un- 
conscious of any aim but their own satisfaction, is the blessed 
beginning of Human Order, Kegulation, and real Govern- 
ment ; there, clothed in a highly different, but again suitable 
garniture of passions, instincts, and equally unconscious as 
to real aim, is the accursed-looking ending (temporary end- 
ing) of Order, Kegulation, and Government ; — very dismal to 
the sane onlooker for the time being ; not dismal to him 
otherwise, his hope, too, being steadfast ! But here, at any 
rate, in this poor Norse theatre, one looks with interest on 
the first transformation, so mysterious and abstruse, of human 
Chaos into something of articulate Cosmos ; witnesses the 
wild and strange birth-pangs of Human Society, and reflects 
that without something similar (little as men expect such 
now) no Cosmos of human society ever was got into exist- 
ence, nor can ever again be. 

The violences, fightings, crimes — ah yes, these seldom fail, 
and they are very lamentable. But always, too, among those 
old populations there was one saving element ; the now want 
of which, especially the unlamented want, transcends all lam- 
entation. Here is one of these strange, piercing, winged- 
words of Ruskin, which has in it a terrible truth for us in 
these epochs now come : 

' My friends, tl^ follies of modern Liberalism, many and 



106 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. 

' great though they be, are practically summed in this denial 
' or neglect of the quality and intrinsic value of things. Its 
'rectangular beatitudes and spherical benevolences, — the- 
' ology of universal indulgence, and jurisprudence which will 
' hang no rogues, mean, one and all of them, in the root, in- 
' capacity of discerning, or refusal to discern, worth and un- 
' worth in anything, and least of all in man ; whereas Nature 
' and Heaven command you, at your peril, to discern worth 
' from unworth in everything, and most of all in man. Your 
'main problem is that ancient and trite one, "Who is best 
' man ? " and the Fates forgive much, — forgive the wildest, 
\ fiercest, cruellest experiments, — if fairly made for the deter- 

* mination of that. Theft and blood-guiltiness are not pleas- 
' ing in their sight ; yet the favouring powers of the spiritual 
' and material world w T ill confirm to you your stolen goods, 
' and their noblest voices applaud the lifting of your spear, 

■ and rehearse the sculpture of your shield, if only your rob- 
' bing and slaying have been in fair arbitrament of that ques- 

* tion, " Who is best man ? " But if you refuse such inquiry, 
' and maintain every man for his neighbour's match, — if you 
' give vote to the simple and liberty to the vile, the powers of 
' those spiritual and material worlds in due time present you 
'inevitably with the same problem, soluble now only wrong 
' side upwards ; and your robbing and slaying must be done 
' then to find out, " Who is vjorst man ? " Which, in so wide 
' an order of merit, is, indeed, not easy ; but a complete 
' Tammany Eing, and lowest circle in the Inferno of Worst, 
' you are sure to find and to be governed by.' ' 

All readers will admit that there was something naturally 
royal in these Haarfagr Kings. A wildly great kind of kin- 
dred ; counts in it two Heroes of a high, or almost highest 
type : the first two Olafs, Tryggveson and the Saint. And 
the view of them, withal, as we chance to have it, I have often 
thought, how essentially Homeric it was : — indeed, w T hat is 
' Homer ' himself but the Rhapsody of five centuries of Greek 
Skalds and wandering Ballad- singers, done {i.e. 'stitched to- 
1 Fors Ckivigera, Letter XIV. pp. 8-10. 



EPILOGUE. 107 

gether ') by somebody more musical than Snorro was ? Olaf 
Tryggveson and Olaf Saint please me quite as well in their 
prosaic form ; offering me the truth of them as if seen in their 
real lineaments by some marvellous opening (through the art 
of Snorro) across the black strata of the ages. Two high, 
almost among the highest sons of Nature, seen as they verit- 
ably were ; fairly comparable or superior to god-like Achilleus, 
goddess-wounding Diomedes, much more to the two Atreidai, 
Kegulators of the Peoples. 

I have also thought often what a Book might be made of 
Snorro, did there but arise a man furnished with due literary 
insight and indefatigable diligence ; who, faithfully acquaint- 
ing himself with the topography, the monumental relics and 
illustrative actualities of Norway, carefully scanning the best 
testimonies as to place and time which' that country can still 
give him, carefully the best collateral records and chronolo- 
gies of other countries, and who, himself possessing the high- 
est faculty of a Poet, could, abridging, arranging, elucidating, 
reduce Snorro to a polished Cosmic state, unweariedly purg- 
ing away his much chaotic matter ! A modern ' highest kind 
of Poet,' capable of unlimited slavish labour withal ; — who, I 
fear, is not soon to be expected in this world, or likely to find 
his task in the Heimskringla if he did appear here. 




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